开云体育

Hello all.

I’ve been having problems with my Gemini I in cold weather. I do solar Imaging in the mornings when temperatures are often around freezing. My mount and Gemini are at that temperature when I start up. What I’m seeing is my Gemini tries to go through start up, but I get a crazy dysfunctional screen, where half the screen looks like it’s trying to go through start up and the other half shows some nonsense. When I bring the whole thing indoors to room temperature, it seems to work OK.
Is this more likely the hand control or the Gemini unit? The power supply seems to be working well. ?

Hi David corrupted characters in the display are usually caused by a bad CPU or display itself but without assessment it’s hard to say.?

Indeed I’ve seen moisture in the CPU socket causing bad CPU and socket causing this.

The other thing you mention is half the screen. This is important info. The CPU feeds data characters to the HC and the HC itself overflows characters from one display half to the other (there are qty 2, 8 char 5x5 displays inside the HC).

You can swap the displays over L to R etc. ?does this change the issue. If doing this just try to be careful inspect the displays for bubbling. ?Only ever seen 4 qty HCs with display issues like this and repairs varied from HC display to CPU to EEPROM. ?Sadly thees displays are impossible to get commercially but the repairers do have some.?

The HC data buffer ICs could be bad but it’s rare. Test by replace on that or use freeze spray?

The HC cable can cause this issues mentioned as it sends a stobe signal from the main board to the HC to load displays?

Lastly as mentioned it could be the Main unit CPU/Socket or even F2 or U3 playing up. ?Lastly could be SRAM or eeprom but doubt it.?

Try the display swap 1st. Take your time try to ground yourself pry up the displays with a small screwdriver make note which is L or R so later you know. Mark the display somehow.

Plug them back in pwr on. ?Does the fault follow the display or shift sides?

Get back on this happy to help. This is your first step they if you can try a HC cable or at least reseat it or measure pin to pin ? ?That said I’ve seen bad or cheap cable pins not contacting the socket properly. Wriggling usually shows this issue

get back?

cheers?
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Brendan