A New Handbox!

A few weeks ago I found a new Autostar I 497 handbox for sale on eBay for $99 and bought it. I still don't quite have it setup right but it's getting close and works well enough for now. The last week or so I've been trying out ASCOM and installed the software so that it works with CdC but still haven't tried it out with the new handbox. Tonight I finally decided to give the ETX and new 497 a whirl outside and spent about an hour and a half getting familiar with the sky again. I got the scope pointed at Polaris and leveled but when I tried an easy align it seemed to slew about twice as far in AZ as it needed to! I tried a one star align on Sirius and same thing, too far. I finally just gave up and manually pointed it at Sirius using my laser pointer as a finder. I was able to see an 8th mag star in the vicinity of Sirius and even picked up 4 or 5 of the brighter stars in M41against a dim glow of the other stars making up this open cluster. Next I slewed over to Jupiter which was rising in the east. It was high enough that I was able to get a good view and even got to try out my 'new' 4mm EP. It's almost parfocal with the 25mm and I was able to bring it into focus with a minimum of hassle. My 'fix' for the ETX's focuser seems to be holding and is a vast improvement over the previous state. Finally I ended up with M42 in Orion. The sky was pretty clear tonight and even with the light pollution I was able to pick up the familiar shape of the hunter. The scope was really getting kind of flakey by now and I was loosing my patience. I need to either lower the tripod or get a higher stool as I had to stand and bend over most of the time. Not the best for my back.
All in all, I'd call it a success. I need to find out the cause of the alignment problem and get that fixed and see if I can get the Autostar to cooperate a little better. It always wants to act like is in the initial state and presents me with the sun warning every time it's turned on.  Not good. I was happy with the performance of the 4mm EP though and satisfied with the limiting magnitude of 8 for this site. Not bad at all.