A week ago, I posted about the Synta firmware 3.21 update for club Orion Atlas/Synta mount owners. http://www.skywatchertelescope.net/swtinc/customer_support.php?id=91&class1=... It appears this Synta handcontroller update should be installed after the installing a new major edition of the ASCOM open source telescope driver software. The current ASCOM is now version 5.0. http://ascom-standards.org/ If you have the existing version 4.0 ASCOM drivers, do not remove them. The upgrade is built on the existing install. You'll also need to install newer ASCOM drivers for your scope. For the Synta/Orion Atlas mount, that's the Celestron driver. http://ascom-standards.org/Downloads/ScopeDrivers.htm There are now specific upgrade drivers for the LX200 classic with Autostar I controller and the new LX200 GPS model. The LX200 drivers are exclusionary. You can install only one or the other, but not both. (Since I ocassionally work with either and the drivers install in seconds, a dropped a copy of both driver install files into my "mount tracking" directory. Either can be installed as needed in a few moments.) I have not fully tested the new ASCOM v5.0 drivers. However, under Cartes du Ciel and Astroplanner, I can enter the scope configuration menus and they both show the version 5 interface. Time to get your mount ready for the new season! The Skyscan v3.21 handcontroller software may not need to be updated from v.3.20. I updated mine just to get it out of the way. The main change is to provide the option to utilize direct drive control between a laptop and a Synta mount. However, direct drive requires wiring modifications to the controller board - something few people are going to do. See the Skywatcher post in the EQ6 newsgroup dated Mar 1 2008 at 2:07 titled "[EQ6] Re: Upgrading Question V3.21" for more details. - Kurt ____________________________________________________________________________________ Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/category.php?category=shopping