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COM4 No scope available LX-200 Sky Commander Dob Driver AltAz JMI/MG-III ASCOM Scope Compustar Magellan I NexStar Astro-Physics Compustar Also, controls over encoder resolution will be provided. These are required only for alignment of JMI/MG-III (Tangent Instrument) compatible systems, and will be discussed in the next chapter. For all other systems, Guide just relies on the internal alignment of the telescope, so be sure your scope is properly aligned in the manner described in its user manual. The hardware issues in connecting a telescope to a computer are quite varied; you should check the instruction manual for your telescope for details. You should determine to which COM port the telescope is attached, and pick the corresponding port in the dialog box. If you don't know which port is used, it's okay to guess. The worst that will happen is that, when you try to control the scope, Guide will pause for about fifteen seconds, then report its failure. In general, you can just pick the sort of telescope you're using, select the right COM port, and you'll be all set. Most telescopes will either be in the above list, or will use the Meade LX-200 command language (so you can just tell Guide to use that system). ASCOM is a system that allows a wide range of telescopes to be controlled, including those in the above list plus many others. If you select ASCOM, you'll be asked to select your telescope from a different (much larger) list of possibilities. Once you have used the Telescope dialog to tell Guide what sort of telescope you have and which serial port it uses, a "Scope Pad" item will be added to the main menu. Clicking on "Scope Pad" toggles display of a little floating dialog box, loosely modelled on the LX-200 control pad. The next step is alignment. For this purpose, systems fall into two categories: the JMI/MG-III encoder-based systems, and everything else. "JMI/MG-III" is used as a shorthand to refer to a huge range of devices: the JMI NGC-Max series, the MicroGuider III,
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