Hi Pete,

That sounds basically like what I'd expect to happen, unfortunately.

WARNING: I dunno much about how TheSky handles telescope control. I'm
a little surprised that ASCOM isn't an option. You might ask Software
Bisque about that (or maybe someone here who knows more about TheSky can
reply?); maybe the option is just "hidden" somewhere.

However, it sounds as if when run TheSky directly controls the telescope,
it grabs the COM (serial) port. And as you say, this means it "does not play
well with others". Inexplicably (to me), ASCOM suffers the same fault. I've
asked about this issue, but have never gotten an answer that I understood.
The impression I gather is that it's just not a priority for ASCOM folk.

Were ASCOM's shortcoming in this area to be fixed, it would help a lot of
people... but you would not be among them, because you can't get ASCOM to work
within TheSky anyway. The only fixes I can see would be:

-- Persuade Software Bisque to support ASCOM (in which case you can set
up Guide to use ASCOM as well; ASCOM will continue to hog the COM port, but
that won't be a problem anymore, because both Guide and TheSky will be able
to access the scope through ASCOM.)

-- Persuade Software Bisque to release the COM port when not in use. After
which, Guide and TheSky will play well with one another. You might run into
some issues if you had Guide's 'telescope indicator' function running -- the one
that shows a little symbol on the chart indicating the current telescope
location. I think there would be some chance that Guide would attempt to
access the COM port at just the same moment that TheSky did, and it's
conceivable that some sort of uncensored heck would break loose. But maybe not.

-- Bill