Bob's Astro Site

Meade originally had 943 star in the Autostar’s SAO database prior to version 2.1. This pertains to Autostar models 495 and 497/ETX. With the release of the LX90 The SAO database was increased to 18,737 stars. This new database of stars produced a strange sky pattern when plotted.

 This View is from the NCP looking South. Dale Chantrill suggest the Meade confused the magnitude with the epoch of the original declination observation. The best explanation I have heard to date. Mead corrected this error in version 2.3Ea, when they announced that ”some database errors have been fixed”. They fixed about 16,000 of them.
With the release of 2.3 the SAO catalog seems to be more correct. The image below reveals a much more even sky coverage. 

Here are the links to the Autostars SAO database ready for use in Cartes du Ciel.
SAO Pre 2.3
SAO From the 2.3Eb build. This catalog was parsed against the SAO catalog from the USNO to add more information and to add precision to the original Autostar database.