I won't get involved in the Rolodex/coke machine issues, as that would involve discussion of how things work, which apparently isn't needed.
But I am still curious about Icebergs original issues with the diseqC-1.2 . When I first read this, I wasn't able to try to duplicate the observations because I use my Azbox slaved. I was hoping that the issues would be solved, but since the discussion is still on-going, I got curious again.
Since diseqC-1.2 positions are stored in the motor, and not in the Azbox, it seemed like there were a few likely causes of problems, ie either the satellite position numbers that ARE stored in the Azbox are getting scrambled, (which is what happens in the darn Fortec Mercury), _OR_ that the Azbox isn't actually sending the SAVE command to the motor, _OR_ that it is sending the save command, but each time it saves again, it might be changing the position number.
Before I went to the trouble of exchanging coaxes and trying the Azbox on my motor, I decided to just try manually entering a diseqC-1.2 position number into my Azbox, and hitting save, just to see if it actually retained the position number. This wouldn't actually do anything to my motor, since I'm not connected to it.
Well, I selected AMC-21, which on my motor is position number 49. I got out of the manual mode, and selected position #49 on the Azbox, and hit save. The (P-49) thing indicated that the Azbox had saved 49 as the AMC-21 position number. I then thought that perhaps if I tried to do another SAVE operation, that it might try doing this to another position instead of position 49. So I went to do a subsequent SAVE command, which is what you might do if you were going to peak a sat's position and save it again. Then I noticed that the Azbox had gone back to AUTOMATIC mode, instead of indicating a 49 down at the bottom. Just out of curiosity, I hit SAVE anyway, to see what would happen, but the (P-49) indicator at the top was still there, so it didn't seem to have re-assigned the position number, but who knows what it actually sent out over the coax. BTW, I DID run MAZ, to check to see if 49 was retained in the AZBOX memory after hitting SAVE again, and it was still there as 49.
HOWEVER, NOW, my question is, HOW would one ever get back to using AUTOMATIC positions, if you wanted to do that??? I guess you'd have to figure out what the last sat you saved is, and select that via manual mode.
Just to check that Automatic mode still worked on other sats, I selected a sat that I'm not using (more on that later), and told it to save it in automatic mode. It appeared that nothing happened at first, but it did seem to save it's position at the first unused (as far as the Azbox knew) position. I then decided to try to change THAT position to another diseqC-1.2 sat position number. I set it to 5, hit SAVE. NOTHING HAPPENED, ie it stayed at the position number that it was saved at before. So for some reason, there doesn't seem to be any way to even change the position number of a satellite after it has been set.
Anyway, now about the "more about that later" issue with the sat I wasn't using. Well, before I started all of this, as I had mentioned before in other posts, I had been working from a satellite list that I first created using that .xml file technique, and edited somewhat using the Azbox editor while back on the older 3877 firmware. This satellite list imported OK into the Azbox, and I'm 90% sure that it was still there when I started this today.
Well, after saving AMC-21 to satellite position 49, it seems like the AZBOX has now reverted to having the OLD probably corrupted satellite list in it's memory again. Ie previously, I only had sats between Galaxy15 and I805 (ie 133W to 55.5W for those unable to use Lyngsat), ie no sats were in my list that I can't see. Well NOW, not only are ALL the unused sats back in there, but they were added to my original list, so now there are duplicates, ie I think I have PAS9/I9 in there about 4 times.
This is bad. I have now changed my mind about experimenting any more with using the Azbox to move a motor, until I get this thing back with my old sat list. I'm HOPING that somewhere along the line, that I SAVED my small sat list recently, so that I won't lose too much. I THINK that I saved the files right before switching to the new firmware, but I'll have to check.
Anyway, yes, the Azbox does seem to have severe problems with respect to using diseqC-1.2, but it goes much deeper than I suspected. I fear that this Azbox has problems that aren't going to ever be solved without a significant effort both by users risking messing up their sat lists and by the Azbox people themselves devoting a significant effort to a box that they seemed to have shoved aside due to their trying to get the new PLUS versions working.
Anyway, it doesn't look good for this being an ONLY receiver for someone. It's still a nice receiver in the SLAVED mode, provided that I can get the old sat list back in there.
