Celestron NexStar 4 GT auto-align problem?

I picked up a Celestron NexStar 4 GT telescope at a garage sale fairly
cheap. The guy said that the computer stuff didn't work right, but
other than that it seemed to be in good shape.

The telescope itself works fine. I can point it at Jupiter and see
it's moons, which is kind of neat. Saturn I can tell appears to be
not quite circular, but the rings are hard to make out with only the
25 mm eyepiece I have (need to get a few more.) But it would be nice
to get the computer stuff working, so ...

The computer stuff *seems* to work fine. It slews happily as I push
the slew buttons, there's no sound of grinding gears or anything bad
like that. But when I make it level and point it north, tell it where
I am, and the time, and it starts finding stars to finish the
calibration, it's way off. As I understand it, it's supposed to pick
two visible bright stars to calibrate with, but when it slews it's not
anywhere near these stars, and I don't really know the sky well enough
(and I'm in the city, with light polution making things even more
difficult) to find them on my own, but I can tell it's not anywhere
near any bright stars.

Judging from the size of the moon in the eyepiece, I can see about one
arc minute of the sky, but generally there's not even a bright star
within the view of the finderscope. (Which I have adjusted to point
accurately. It's very nice.)

After going through the documentation, the first thing I noticed was
that the model name in the setup was wrong. So I fixed that, hoping
that was the only problem, but it wasn't.

When it slews from star to star, it certainly seems to think it knows
what it's doing, and it doesn't show any problems, but it doesn't seem
to come anywhere close to what it's looking for.

Am I wrong in expecting it to come somewhat close to the calibration
stars? Or is there perhaps something wrong with the sensors that
determine how much the motors move the scope around?

Perhaps I should take it out to the local star party -- friday nights
at Mansfield Dam (I'm in Austin, TX) and see what the people who have
a clue have to say about it, people who can actually get their hands
on it and try it themselves, but this seemed a good place to start to
see if anybody had any ideas.

I've looked at Celestron's FAQs. This one is the closest to my
problem --

http://www.celestron.com/support/faq_114gt.htm#114A3

but I've already done that. (I know this FAQ is for a different
model. Mine is model 11041, and I've selected `4 inch' as the model
on the computer, which is the only setting that seems right. It was
previously set to 114 mm when I first got it.)

(I actually got a degree in Astronomy in college, but only one class
actually had me touch a telescope, and that class was optional.
(Still, it was one of my favorite classes, and the telescope was a
very nice 16" one, alas in the middle of Austin, but I digress.) And
this was 11 or so years ago. So I'm somewhat familiar with the
theory, and have some amount of skill with fixing electrical things,
but have almost no practical experience with small telescopes.)

Am I expecting too much of the telescope, to be close to calibrated
once I tell it where and when I am, and point it level/north? If not,
does this sort of thing happen often? And if not, anybody ever had a
similar problem? If so, how was it fixed? Would Celestron charge me
a fortune if I were to send it in? Should I be asking them rather
than here :)

--
Doug McLaren, dougmc@xxxxxxxxxx
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
.