On Thu, 12 Feb 2004, Eben King wrote:
> I have an idea of buying the batteries locally (no shipping cost), then
> returning them if the UPS fails to charge.
That's probably your best bet.
> * Should I scrape together four car/motorcycle batteries, connect them in
> series, and test the UPS with that?
Eh... not sure that's such a great idea. Automotive batteries are
designed to provide a huge surge of starting current to turn over a motor,
for a few seconds. Deep-cycle UPS (or marine, or general duty) batteries
are designed to provide more modest amounts of current for much longer
periods of time, and for a lot of full discharge/charge cycles.
If you were going to do this, you'd be better off with deep-cycle
batteries. I'm most familiar with the marine variety, but the more
sophisticated the chemistry is, the higher the cost. Since your charging
cycle can depend on the chemistry, you'd want to stick with something
similar to the original (I guess most residential UPS's have been lead
acid in the past, don't know for sure).
> * Is there anybody (locally, as it's too heavy to ship) who can check out
> * the brains of the UPS, to verify its operation?
If it's a SmartUPS, then it should have a serial port on the back for
communication with a host. If you have a Windows machine that you can
install PowerChute on, that might serve as a verification that the
controller hardware is okay. I seem to recall PowerChute giving a lot of
good info, like direct measurements of input frequency and voltage, etc.
Who knows, maybe it would tell you something useful.
If you hook it up to line voltage, turn it on, and you don't even get
indicator lights on the front panel, something may be seriously wrong.
Worst case, somebody might be selling the electronic innards on EBay or
something...
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