Daniel,

I tested the NexStar 11 GPS serial interface using HyperTerm and another terminal emulator program to talk to the telescope directly. The telescope did not even echo the characters sent to it and did not respond to the single character commands which should elicit a response like current position. I have used serial ports to connect lots of different kinds of equipment (computer to computers, computers to terminals, etc) over the last 25 years and have never seen anything quite like this.

A friend (who happens to be an electrical engineer) conjectures that Dell is current-limiting its serial ports to the point that the Celestron serial port basically shorts out the signal. Thus the problem is an impedance mismatch problem...

• Problem still occuring? - okiebill - November 26, 2002 - 16:22 UTC