Dead UPS - options

[Tim Streater]

OK. In my case there's just the one battery.

[Jethro_uk]

Same here. All it has to do is keep a desktop PC and 2 USB drives up for long enough to shut down gracefully.

Looking back, I think what fried the battery was a power cut we had a few months ago. I had installed the UPS, but not quite got around to setting up actions for when the power failed (it's a bit of a faff under Linux). So the battery was forced to supply the power until it was completely discharged.

When I get the new battery, I shall ensure the software is working 100%. From a bit of googling, it seems the USB bus might have been going to sleep, and therefore unable to read the UPS output. I'll have to experiment.

[The Other Mike]

APC, along with many other UPS manufacturers have been overcharging sealed cells for decades, not helped when a large proportion of the cell manufacturers provide duff info.

[Martin Brown]

Ouch! I hope someone else was paying for this MFU...

Shame - those are definitely the amongst worst I have seen already. Heck of a lot of stored energy in big batteries when they go wrong.

[Jethro_uk]

Oh well, £27 later, battery arrived an hour ago. Plugged it in, UPS burst into life with a squeal. Plugging into Winpower on laptop showed battery as being 100% charged, so connected server to UPS, fired up Linux NUTS webpage, and we're showing input and output as 239.2V AC @ 49.9Hz, battery level at 13.6V, and load at 13%.

Just need to work on shutting down nicely on a power failure ... this afternoons project.

[Rick Hughes]

Eaton are a good outfit, product is sound.

Replace the battery and stick with what you have.

[Jethro_uk]

As you will see upthread, I have just replaced the battery ...

[The Other Mike]

Warm them up and flatten them out with heavy duty butter pats

[Fergus McMenemie]

I am a fan of second hand APC stuff, especially dead ones; they are much cheaper! I remember reading somewhere about a company that disposed of UPS units every few years, buying new replacments.

The bottom line is that all UPS's contain lead acid batteries. These will last a max of ten years. But I have seen 5 to 10 years quoted. You can get replacment batteries from APC which cost a fortue and of course the APC batteries, athough absolutly standard, have special APC only part numbers. However many sites will sell equivilents for any APC power supply.

Bottom l> after suffering another power cut (is it me, or are they getting more