He said that the dealer had told him that Celestron had made them to the
stores specs, and that it had a Byear(?) gear system installed instead of
the "standard" gear system.

Hi:

Well, the fork mount Celestrons of the day all had Byers gear systems, but the
white paintjob would be unusual.

Peace,
Rod Mollise
Author of _Choosing and Using a Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope_
Like SCTs and MCTs?
Check-out sct-user, the mailing list for CAT fanciers!
Goto http://members.aol.com/RMOLLISE/index.html