Motor Drive Options for Super Polaris

What options do I have other than those originally provided by Celestron and/or Vixen? Does JMI offer drives? Is there a best buy?

There are three lower cost options that I know of. One is the JMI drive reviewed on Cloudy nights recently. The next is the currently produced CG5 drive from Celestron $165 dual axis. Third is the Orion version of the Celestron CG5 drive at $119 plus about $15 for shipping, which I believe is functionally identical to the Celestron. I purchased an installed the Orion on my Super Polaris. It attaches with one bolt for each drive instead of the set screws and has fewer slewing options than the real Vixen drives, but it works just fine for tracking, and I think for guiding (but I only do visual). It's certainly the best buy, unless straight AC will work for you. But, it doesn't come with covers and so the plug recepticals for the cables are exposed to abuse. It's perfectly workable, but not a throw it in the back of the car and go arrangement. On mine there was also a trick to installing the RA drive through all those damn little holes that involved filing a purchased washer so it would fit through the first hole and holding it in place with a piece of thread while I threaded the bolt through it, and the purchase of a slightly longer metric bolt for the Dec motor. I can explain this more thoroughly if you actually get one. The instructions from Orion were surprisingly useful considering that this was going on a different mount.

I believe Joe O'Neil at O'Neil Optical offers a variety of very affordable drives for the old Vixen Polaris and Super Polaris mounts. Here's a link to the page on their web site. Scroll down and you will find the info after the scopes:

http://www.oneilphoto.on.ca/sw2.htm