You may recall that a couple of weeks ago I was trying to use my telescope when it just stopped dead. I'm sure you're wondering what happened next, aren't you? Well, settle in.
I was pretty sure the problem was in the equipment, not the software, but I wasn't totally sure. For one thing, Device Manager didn't show any COM ports, and that seemed—
Wait. COM ports? Like serial ports? Who cares about those anymore?
Well, it so happens that my telescope mount was initially designed about 20 years ago and was fitted out with an RS-232 serial port. This was back in the day when most computers also had a serial port. But time passed, and eventually it was redesigned to ditch the RS-232 port and look like this:
But here's the thing: that RJ45 jack on the bottom might look like an RJ45 jack, but it's not. It's really a serial port with an odd connector. Later still the USB port was added, but that's also a serial port.
This is generally not a problem. The USB port connects to a virtual COM port created by software, and that's been working fine for me for months. But not only did it stop working, it also seemed like my virtual COM ports had gone away too.
After much fussing around, which resulted in everything being wrecked, I restored to an old restore point and voilà! My COM ports were back. But they still didn't work. So I finally bought a special cable that has an RJ45 plug on one end, a USB plug on the other, and a chip that provides the proper conversion of current levels. I also hauled out my old Radio Shack multimeter, which I bought 40 years ago and use about once every two or three years,
The multimeter confirmed that the USB port was dead¹ but the RJ45 port was active. So I plugged everything in, installed the drivers for the cable,² started up the software, and . . .
It still didn't work. Waah!
I was getting ready to throw in the towel and send the whole thing in for service when I happened to notice a Test button on the software interface. Hmmm. So I clicked it. It didn't really tell me much except that by default it was set to 9600 baud. Who sets anything to 9600 baud these days?
No one. But back in the days when the RJ45 jack was first added to the mount . . .
Well, even then 9600 baud was a thing of the distant past. But long story short, that was the key. When I set the COM port speed to 9600, everything lit up and the software said it was good to go.
What a clusterfuck. But at least I think it's working now. I haven't actually tested it fully yet, but I'll do that in the next few days. It'll be a couple of weeks before the moon is back down and I can do any kind of serious imaging.
¹Yeah, the USB port had just suddenly gone dead. I don't know why. It was added to the mount a couple of years ago by popular demand, and my guess is that it was kludged in by connecting it to a little circuit board of its own that was connected to power separately from the other stuff. Most likely, the power connection came apart.
²I had to install drivers for a cable? Yes indeed. These are the drivers that create a virtual COM port that's assigned to the cable.
Com ports? Serial ports? 9600 baud. WTF are those? I come here for the laughs.
RS-232 port
Gather round children and shall tell you a tale of the past...
Comm ports. Don't get me started. I have a amateur radio operator's license (I refuse to call it a HAM radio operator), you know, another hobby were we boomers are not dying off fast enough to save it. Amateur radio is filled with radios and software that still use MS access databases, comm ports, RS-232 ports and so on. One of my favorite rants is how a hobby that should be on the cutting edge of technology is proudly stuck in the past. It is confounding to me on how may Ham radio operators don't know anything about a Windows PC, much less a Linux command line. Most have never gotten over the FCC dropping the Morse code requirements back in the 90's.
Did an update kill the ports? Maybe blocked by antivirus software? Inquiring minds....
I got several things from Kevin’s post:
(1) It’s beyond the pale that Kevin bought all this equipment within the last couple of years and it’s using approximately the same communications technology as my mid-eighties Kaypro computer.
(2) Did Kevin throw out all his technical documentation? Of course not! Kevin might have forgotten where he stashed it, but there’s no way in hell he tossed it out with the packing materials. So this is a total failure of the manufacturer.
(3) Kevin obviously has a storehouse of patience that exceeds any human I’ve ever met ITRW.
The thing that looks like an RJ-45 jack is an RJ-45 jack, it's just not an Ethernet RJ-45 jack. The RJ (registered jack) connector specifications predate their use for Ethernet by a few decades.
And even when they're used for Internet, they're not all the same. I'm currently in the process of wiring up some Power over Ethernet (PoE) devices that use the same connectors, but have 48V power going over some of the wires. (The device that supplies the power has to do some negotiation with the downstream device so that the downstream device isn't fried if it doesn't use or understand PoE.)
But did it work in safe mode?
What happens if your planned lymphoma treatment works, and you no longer have dex nights? Will that be the end of your astrophotographic excursions?
Can't edit to add: Personally, I would like to see your new treatment work, even at the expense of not seeing your lovely nighttime pictures.
Radio Shack to the rescue! I miss that store.
Lots of devices, even fairly new ones, are ostensibly USB but are actually just old-style serial under the hood, with some ten cent converter chip handling the details. Full USB support is a pain to deal with if all you need is to shovel a few kilobytes of data back and forth, so it makes sense.
And for bodged-in upgrades, you really should look at the world of test equipment and industrial machinery, where the same unit might be manufactured for a few decades. One example that comes to mind is an instrument which was originally supplied with a 3.5” floppy drive, and some years ago was upgraded to replace that with a USB port for a flash drive. Which I’m sure under the hood presented itself to the rest of the machine as a large floppy disk.
Kevin, you are the man! Persistence pays. Congrats.
Ah! The dreaded ST4 compatibility jack.
It is there to provide backward compatibility with an autoguider made by Santa Barbara Instuments Group. But SBIG hasn't made it in about 3 decades. Nevertheless, it has become what passes for a standard in telescope mounts, like it or not.