I have not tried it yet as I ran out of time, but it is looking promising and makes sense after the error messages it has posted when I tried to open it. It usually says com1 not there or something to that effect. Now I assume what I would have to check to see if com1 is open??
If your serial cable checks out as a good crossover cable, then I'd use hyperterminal (or it's like) to do a wrap-around test. Open the terminal program, pick comX as the port, where "X" is the port that corresponds to the physical port/connector you'll be using. I have no good way to tell you how to know which physical port corresponds to which com port. But if you connect pin 2 to pin 3 at the end of the crossover cable and if you can type anything into the hyperterminal window and see it echoed back* ... then you know the cable and com/port number is correct. I'd just try com1 - com4 and see which works. The DE-9 connector for the serial port on any PC I've ever fooled with has been in the range of com1 - com4.navee8or:
Now I assume what I would have to check to see if com1 is open??
*Set the hyperterminal window to half duplex or what you type will show up in the window no matter what is, or isn’t, connected. Alternately leave it as full duplex and you should see what you type plus the echo.
me n mac, I’ll try this in the morning. Tdsc may not be working but the leonid meteor shower still goes on early this morning it did not dissapointment with a clear but cold(35 degree)air temp. I’m headed outside to enjoy the light show. If you get the chance try it the activity should be winding down now but last night I was getting 30 to 40 meteors per hour. Thanks again for the help. I feel real good about how things are going with the proceedure, and I will have a rport for you tomorrow afternoon. Jerry 
I missed the show this year. Where I am now has a bit too much light pollution for good seeing, though the 2001 storm was visible from the local football field. Usually the wife and I go to the cabin for the show but she lost her battle w/cancer and I didn’t care to do the trip myself.
Hopefully the faults you’ve corrected to date will result in a working system. I don’t know what to tell you if everything checks out and what you need is a software driver for Win98 to go between the DSC software messages and the interface box messages.
navee8or:
Greetings, First I have very little exposure to electronics but am willing to learn. My question is I would like to use arduino duo to read the position of two encoders and provide that information to an astronomy progra called ezdsc.:
So if EZDSC is running on a PC, wouldn’t it be easier to buy a USB GPIO interface and do the encoder interface from the same PC?
I don’t know if I’d trust Win98 running on some old PC to catch every step out of the encoders.
Please forgive me, I have no Idea what you are talking about, I do not speak geek. All I can tell you is the system is fully functional and at present, there are no issues. Thanks for your time and help.
I wasn’t too long ago I posted here and got some great help, Now one of my encoders died and I need help trying to find a replace ment. All I know it is called a capacitive encoder and the encoder has a sensitivity of 8192 and it runs on 7 to 9 volts dc. Can anyone find a manufacturer od distibutor for the encoder i need alon with the specs??? Thanks for listening to my whinning, Jerry
navee8or:
I wasn’t too long ago I posted here and got some great help, Now one of my encoders died and I need help trying to find a replace ment. All I know it is called a capacitive encoder and the encoder has a sensitivity of 8192 and it runs on 7 to 9 volts dc. Can anyone find a manufacturer od distibutor for the encoder i need alon with the specs??? Thanks for listening to my whinning, Jerry
Try seeing if one of these at DigiKey matches yours …
http://www.digikey.com/us/en/ph/cui/amt.html
BTW IIRC the encoder runs off of 5V. The interface box has a voltage regulator in it that turns the 7-9V input into 5V to run the encoders and PIC (inside the box).