Steve LaFlamme Jan 2, 2004
> Hi Don,that it
>
> It's at least a "possible" item:
>
> http://www.projectpluto.com/future.htm#ascom
>
> As is mentioned there, the big advantage of ASCOM would be
> would enable me to stop worrying about the various ways in whichscopes
> are controlled, expanding the range of supported scopes a bit.(Not
> enormously, since so many scopes are already LX-200 or Celestronsystems,
> compliant. And I can't simply throw out the scope control code I've
> got; some scopes supported in Guide, such as encoder-based
> are not supported by ASCOM. But it would help.)needs to
>
> Jim, what Don is talking about is the fact that when Guide
> control a telescope, it accesses the serial port, then releasesit for
> use by other programs. A lot of less "civilized" software grabs theshut
> serial port when it starts up, then doesn't release it until it's
> down. So while software X is running, software Y is unable toaccess
> the telescope.grab
>
> The approach used by Guide is helpful in some limited conditions
> (ones where all the programs agree to behave nicely, and to not
> the serial port more than they have to), but it's not reallysufficient
> in some cases. In theory, if Guide works through ASCOM, more ofthese
> "conflicting software" problems could be resolved.
>
> -- Bill