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A fellow by the name of Ron Sampson can repair hand controllers and main boards on Meade telescopes. He does very good work. All you need to send him are the board(s).
You can contact him by posting a message on the Yahoo LX90 or LX200 group forums. http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/lx90/
Good luck-- by the way he repaired the hand controller for our astronomy clubs 10 inch Meade LX200, at a very reasonable cost.
You have a LARGE Meade telescope. This should be an easy fix if you can disassemble the fork arm and get inside.
First I would contact Meade customer service to see if they have a manual that shows disassemble instructions. If not I would join the Yahoo LX200 forum and look for help there with an owner of the 16 inch model.
http://www.meade.com/support/index.html
Just search in Yahoo Groups for the LX200 forum.
On smaller scopes the DEC motor is held on by two spring loaded bolts, probably one has become loose?
You have a standard lx200 problem. If you transported your scope a lot with the drives "locked" it damages the RA and DEC drives. If you keep using it, the motors burn out and start drawing too much current. This sometimes blows the motor driver chips on the motherboard which are getting very rare.
The burned out tantalum caps can be replaced with better aluminum electrolytics very cheaply. If the ones in your Autostar burned out, they often burn up the ribbon cable. Also, they often take out U11, a 74LS14 chip on the motherboard. Also a cheap repair. You should take the Autostar apart. If they are burned up, it will be obvious. If your ribbon cable survived, you should replace the caps with aluminum electrolytics. I believe they are 6.8 uf.
So, if you can work an ohmmeter, measure the resistance of the two drive motors with the plugs unplugged. If it is about 14 ohms they are ok. If they are about 3 or 4 ohms, they are toast. Check the worm drives for end play. If there is just a little, you can adjust them. The battery jack on the control panel often breaks the solder joints on the board, causing one of the problems you describe. You can check that and replace/resolder as necessary. The on/off switch often fails and gets intermittent. These are also cheap and can be replaced. I don't repair these for a living but I repair a few of them for friends in the club. These are pretty common problems.
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