After hours of work, including a session to 1:00 am to guide it to over 40 stars in the SmartMount process, Bertha's AutoStar II handset died. The garbage characters continued, and after trying to reload the firmware, which failed, I was unable to revive her by pressing the "safe mode" keys on the handset, as the handset was no longer working. Fortunately I signed up for SkyAssurance from Meade, so its a free replacement, but Bertha will be done for about two weeks until the new AutoStar II handset arrives. Murphy strikes again.