Meade PC cable and software for ETX-70 and DS2000-Serie

hmmmm yes I guess it does work...

bill is very happy with this product and it arrived very promptly

this product DOES NOT WORK ! total wash of money my telescope it doesent even recognise dont .wast your hard earned money

This was a present for my wife, and I got to install it. Lucky old me.It contained one CD with some software, a length of cable with RJ45-style connectors and an RJ45 to DB9 adapter for the PC.For forty quid? Hmmmm.....You plug the DB9 into your PC/laptop serial port and the RJ45 cable then links to your Meade 'Autostar' equipped telescope. Then you can use the nice graphical software to surf the heavens. Wonderful!Well, it could be wonderful, but.....When did you last see a laptop with a DB9 serial port? Not a recent one, I bet. Everything uses USB these days. So a USB-to-DB9 serial was purchased - no luck. These adaptors are variable in quality - so an expensive one was bought, which sorta worked, but seemed to lose the plot occasionally. Used RS232 tools to exercise and test these ports, and the statistics were not good.So we got a used laptop with a DB9 serial port, which really worked, hooray!But the software would not fully install - the ACP control program installed, seemed to be OK, but not the "Starry Night" software with all the stars and planets.So let's check the label then.... Maybe the 2002 laptop is _too_old_?Well - the Meade #506 label says that this 'Astrofinder' is good for Windows 95/98/NT - and we are using Win2000 (successor to NT) - so our 8-year-old OS is seemingly too *new* for this antique Meade offering! What?This Meade 506 is so old that we don't have a laptop old enough to run the whole thing - although it _will_ install on a 1999 Win98 desktop, which is no use at all to us when outdoors with the telescope. The (c) copyright label on the Meade package says '2000'. Right. That makes sense.We are left with the steam-driven ACP software which may be an improvement over the apalling Meade LED controller box for the optically excellent telescope, but frankly I cannot be bothered any more.We spent over a thousand on that Meade 'scope, extras and lenses and so on, and this Meade link to the PC is a fivers worth at best. I've seen much better freeware, too. Very sad.What do Meade think they are playing at? Even if you can make it work it's ancient software that lacks polish.Not recommended at all. Save your money.