Rob's motor/controller assembly arrived Saturday (thanks!) and it is identical to the one on the telescope. It also only drives the polar axis backwards! No combination of button pushing will reverse the motor at the sideral rate. Only at centering/slewing speeds can it be made to rotate the proper direction. So- I opened the case. Two of the screw heads broke-off rather than come unscrewed from the plastic housing. Then exactly what I feared happened- all the little gears spilled-out. The good news is that I can apparently reverse the leads to the motor. There is a complicated circuit board so reversing the input voltage isn't an option. The bad news is that everything else must be removed before the motor leads can be accessed. I will use the original motor assembly to re-install the gear train after I reverse the motor leads. Hopefully this will solve the problem. If so I will repeat the process on the original unit. The bigger question is, how many of these things did Meade sell with a drive that only works in the southern hemisphere? I despise budget telescopes like this, and I'm having a hard time having any respect for Meade now that I know this isn't a fluke.