AutoStar cable

All cables of all sorts of AutoStar and control handboxes supplied with the ETX scopes are to short for my taste, see Fig.1. Apparently it is not hard to find a solution to this problem. The handbox connector has 8 pins, strongly reminding to ISDN or 10baseT (CAT5 UTP) connectors. Comparing both it is clear that the ISDN type is somewhat longer, but fits nicely into the handbox socket of the ETXs, even with pleasent "click".
Let's have a closer look to the pinout of the connectors, maybe a simple ISDN cable would already be fine to connect the AS#497 handbox to the telescope. NO! Life can not such simple. If I may draw your attention to Fig.2, especially to the colour scheme which points out that the cable inverts the pine order.
Now have a look at Fig.4, the closeup of a standart ISDN cable, here, shown by the colours again, the pin order is maintained. Crimping cables is not a big deal, still it's work to be done; a new cable could then connect the handbox to the scope. But wait, once in a while I am using the simple control handbox which has a non-replaceable pigtail cable.
For me the most convenient solution was found in using a standart ISDN cable together with a passive ISDN coupler to connect to the original AutoStar cable.
Minor detail to be mentioned, the ISDN connectors are a little bit longer, so are the connector tongues, thus, the connector ports of the sockets are a little deeper.... Consequently it is a little bit more tricky to pull the AutoStar cable the ISDN coupler.

Fig.1: Meade's AutoStar #497 cable
Fig.2: AS connectors closeup





Fig.3: ISDN cable with coupling box Fig.4: ISDN connectors closeup



Last modified Mar. 27th 2003