The Setup tab allows you to configure the telescope, dome, rotator, and focusers links.
Before you can use any Observatory equipment, you must first install the ASCOM Platform, plus any ASCOM drivers that you wish to use. The ASCOM Platform, and many drivers, are available at http://ascom-standards.org. Many equipment manufacturers supply their drivers directly, either with the equipment or via internet download from their web sites.
All Instruments
All of the instrument types have their own options menu, accessed using
their Options 
button. Most menus show Choose,
Setup, and Enable
for Connect All. Some have additional menu options, which will
be described below.
To choose the instrument to use, select Choose. This will bring up the ASCOM Chooser, which will allow you to select the hardware you wish to use.
Select the telescope driver you wish to use from the drop list. If your instrument does not appear, consult the ASCOM web site or the manufacturer. The first time you choose an instrument you must click the Properties button, to configure the driver. Some drivers do not require configuration, but you still must click the button once. Once you have set up your instrument click OK. If you need to access the settings again later, you can use the Setup item on the Options menu.
At the bottom right of the dialog there are Connect All and Disconnect All buttons. These buttons will allow you to connect and disconnect all equipment with a single click. If you do not wish a certain instrument to respond to this, turn off the Enable for Connect All item on the individual Options menu.
There is also a "global" options menu at lower right. At this time it has one option, Set Polling Rates.
All of the polling intervals are specified in seconds. The default is one second for all except for dome slaving, which has a default of five seconds. In most cases, the defaults are acceptable.
Some instruments may be slow to respond to polling traffic; in this case a high rate may cause MaxIm DL to become less responsive. In this case slowing down the polling will likely make the software work more smoothly.
If the instrument responds very quickly, a faster polling rate will provide more frequent updates to the screen.
Telescope
Most ASCOM drivers know the type of telescope mount and can report it.
For these drivers set Mount Type
in the Telescope Options menu
to Automatic (from driver). However
the commonly-used TheSky-Controlled Telescope
used to control Paramount ME
Important: For German Equatorial mounts, the ASCOM driver may indicate which side of the pier the telescope is on. Unfortunately, some drivers do not report this correctly. For this reason the Telescope Options menu provides an additional item Side of Pier. When set to ASCOM Normal, the side of pier information is taken from the ASCOM driver as-is. When set to ASCOM Inverted, the sense of the pier flip is reversed. If you find that the Auto-Center function works backwards, then you should try this setting. From Scope Position overrides the ASCOM driver and derives the side of pier solely from the current telescope azimuth. If the ASCOM driver does not report side of pier information, then the information is also calculated from the azimuth. Although this calculation will work in the majority of telescope positions, some mounts can operate inverted and the calculation will be incorrect in that situation. It may be necessary under those conditions to set the pier flip controls manually.
Important: When using the Gemini telescope controller, make sure you have configured the hand paddle for JNow coordinates, instead of J2000.0 coordinates. Also make this same setting in the ASCOM driver setup dialog box.
Dome
The Dome Options menu has several additional items, Set Park Position, Find Home, Setup Sync, and Slaving Parameters. Some of these are also available on the Dome Tab.
Domes are usually parked at a specific azimuth when not in use. This may be necessary for orienting a solar cell, minimizing wind loads on the shutter, providing outside door access, or simply for cosmetic or convenience reasons. Set Park Position will set the park location to the current azimuth of the dome.
Many domes have a home sensor, which is needed to determine an absolute dome position (i.e. the position measurement encoder can only detect relative movement). In this case there is a homing function that slews the dome until the home sensor is located, and then the dome azimuth is synchronized to a known position. To start this homing function, select the Find Home item. This may require several minutes.
The home function must know the azimuth of the home sensor. Some domes configure this through their Setup dialog; if so, you should use their built-in sync feature. If the dome does not have a built-in Sync feature, then you can use the Setup Sync dialog.
Enter the Azimuth of Homed Position, as determined by your dome installation. Turn on Auto Sync on Home to enable this feature. If this feature is provided directly by the driver, you should turn this option off to ensure that it does not conflict.
Focusers
Focusers do not have additional options; however, there are some special considerations.
Focuser 1 should be physically mounted with Camera 1, and Focuser 2 (if used) should be physically mounted with Camera 2. Autofocus will assume this is the case.
ASCOM does not have built-in consideration for multiple focusers. As a result, it may not be possible to use two focusers that operate using the same driver. If the two focusers use different drivers (this usually means they are different brands of focusers) then there will be no conflict and both will operate.
Rotator
The Rotator Options menu has two additional items. Check the Reverse option if the sense of rotation of your equipment is opposite to that of the FOV indicator on the Zoom Tab. To align the camera with the FOV's orientation, you can make small rotational adjustments until the horizontal axis of acquired images runs east-west, then select Set Current Pos as Zero. However an easier way is to solve an image, then use the Sync Rotator to Solved Image command on the Zoom tab.