UPS go bye bye

[giza]

When I woke up this morning, I saw that my computer (normally left on) had turned off. I turned it back on, saw that nothing was amiss with it, and went into work. When I came home in the evening, I decided to do a little more troubleshooting.

I figured that I should rule out the UPS, so I unplugged it. Then I watched as the power was cut to my equipment. Okay, so the UPS is the problem. I did some more testing, and it looks like after 4 years, the battery in it finally gave out. And the UPS only had a 2-year warranty. Bummer.

At this point, I had two options. I could replace the battery, which involved waiting a few days for it to arrive, or I could drive up to Microcenter and pick up a UPS from there. I did the latter, and it turned out to be the better chioce. I found a shiny new LS500 UPS from APC and picked that up.

I'm (obviously) back online, and the UPS is working out fine. I'm debating what to do with the old BackUPS 1000 I have now. I'm thinking about buying a replacement battery for it and plugging my TV and PlayStation 2 into it. It's geeky, but it'll also give me a second working UPS in case the new one ever goes bad.

Technology is fun.

Comments

[tgeller.livejournal.com]

Plus you can DDR when the lights go out! Yours'll be the most popular house on the block come armageddon... for about 30 minutes. ;)

[drleo.livejournal.com]

It's too late now, but APC actually has a Trade-in program where they'll credit the value of your current UPS to the purchase of a newer one. I traded in an old Back-UPS 400 that wasn't working for an LS 700, and it ran me about $80 or so.

Fun with a disposable UPS.

[cjthomas.livejournal.com]

I'm (obviously) back online, and the UPS is working out fine. I'm debating what to do with the old BackUPS 1000 I have now. I'm thinking about buying a replacement battery for it and plugging my TV and PlayStation 2 into it.

Or, you can see how the charging circuitry reacts to having a somewhat larger lead/acid battery than expected hooked up };>.

In theory, putting a marine battery in my server closet will keep the machines running for hours. The catch is that there are at least three ways of charging the battery in a UPS, and only one of them is guaranteed to work well with an unexpected battery size.

It would certainly be a fun experiment if you have a spare UPS lying around, though, and you'd probably need it to run a TV and PS2 for more than five minutes.

[giza.livejournal.com]

Many years ago, the place where I was sysadminning at had a planned power outage late at night so the power company could upgrade the transformer feeding our building. We had an APC Matrix (http://www.apc.com/products/family/index.cfm?id=72) for our phone switch, so before the power was cut, we were sure to plug up MP3 server into it. When the power was cut, the entire building was silent and the server room was dark... save for the lights from the switch and the sound of MP3s. :-)

[furahi.livejournal.com]

Heh, back before UPS were common here (they still sort of aren't :P) I used to play my music loud when the lights were out, and some neighbours did ask how we were doing that, since most speakers tape recorders can't play that loud ^_^

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[netcrimes.livejournal.com]

Hey Dougster,

I e-mailed you. Chris is having trouble downloading two messages from his hitchcockmodels.com account. Methinks someone is either sending him a big file he wasn't expecting or its spam or a virus. Can you check and e-mail or IM me? My e-mail is working fine.

Jayne