As the latest daily build to TSX has changed the way pointing and syncing operates, I decided that I needed to do a new pointing test to resolve the offset that I can't remove with a sync like I used to be able to do. Unfortunately, when I tried to do a pointing test it killed my mount (Paramount ME).
What
I did last night was as follows. I homed the
mount, got the CCD running and sorted out the parameters for an
automated pointing run. I then said “go”. It said are you sure - this
will delete the old model. Yes, I said. The software then started
stepping through the list of positions saying that they weren’t accessible. I hit
stop. Something wasn't right. The mount was saying that it couldn’t slew. I turned it off and
on and re-homed. As soon as I tried to move the mount it just said that
it couldn’t slew. It's been working fine for the last week (years!) and I've not changed anything which would upset the balance or anything like that. Unfortunately, I was doing this remotely and couldn't tell completely what was going on. I tried re-loading the old pointing model and a few other things, but nothing worked.
During the day today I tried while I could see the mount. As soon
as I engage the computer, the mount starts beeping and saying that it
can’t slew. If I home it with the joystick and drive it with the
joystick it all works correctly, but as soon as I connect the computer
it beeps and says it can’t slew. Further investigation shows that the
position of the home sensor is now reported as “nan” (not-a-number) for
HA and 0.0 for dec. I tried to edit this and upload the correct numbers
(10, 180 - I'm in the southern hemisphere), which it lets me do. No joy. After re-starting the mount it just starts beeping again. When I look again the numbers
have reverted to nan, 0.0. Nothing I do changes this. I’ve tried everything I can think of to force the mount to accept these numbers. No change.
The mount is balanced and works fine. It is an old ME, the version which still had 2 through the mount serial ports and not the Aux. Connector. I am now running TSX 10.5.0 (build 10229) - released September 2016.
How can I get the mount to work again?