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APC Recalls 2.1 Million UPS Units
Controlio writes "Check your cubicles. APC has recalled two of its Back-UPS CS models, the Back-UPS CS 350 and Back-UPS CS 500, in both the 120 volt and 230-volt flavors. The units were sold between November of 2000 and December of 2002. The affected units have the potential to overheat, melting the outer casing and causing a potential fire hazard. Yikes."
Usualy when a power supply blows its because of an overcharged capacator. Toms hardware had a review of a few dozen power supplies a few months back, he found that aparently alot of manufactures are overrating their supplies max wattage. Some of the blowouts he described sound pretty similar to what you mentioned (loud pop). Might want to see if your dead power supply was on his bad list.
Best Power publishes their pinouts and protocols, in addition to making a very nice UPS.
Their products are also bundled with power management software that works just peachily on a Linux box.
We've had a Patriot Pro in place on our production machine for a year or so now, absolutely no complaints.
As usual slashdot provides the worst URL for the story. The URL in the story is simply the press release. This is their main site about it, has much better information about how to identify if your UPS is part of the recall... and links to a nice FAQ. Of course I'm still wondering what type of unit they will replace mine with.
If you have apcupsd setup and the cable hooked up you can use the following command to find out your serial number:
apcaccess | grep SERIALNO
Just checked the CS 500 under my desk and sure enough mine is one of the ones in the recall.
Here's the more detailed page with instructions to finding out if your's is one of them.
And the recall instructions I got once I registered my UPS.
Looks like all they are doing is replacing the "dangerous" unit with a "safe" unit of the same model, as they ask you to remove the battery from the recall unit and reuse it in the replacement unit.
I was kinda hoping to get a fresh battery with this recall. But then this does save them a hell lot in shipping considering how heavy the batteries are. With 2.1 million unit, every ounce saved amounts to quite a bit of money.
Hopefully I get a replacement soon, power at my apartment sucks.
Here is a link to the signaling daemon which is completely open source, works with all their serial APCs and has bee out since october of 1999. http://www.apc.com/tools/download/software_comp.cf m?sw_sku=SDW32&os_list=Linux
Actually...
If you do read the tech sheet on SmartUPSes, you'll see it's not what you think.
What you wrote is precisely describing how a BackUPS works. The battery power stays dormant until there is a power loss. Then, it kicks in and with only a minor glitch, it gives you fairly rounded sinewave voltage.
SmartUPS is not the same. Technically, when you plug in a SmartUPS, all your power cord does is charge the battery. Everything plugged on your SmartUPS gets its current from the battery, which is really decently sine-waved.
That way, you don't suffer from minor brownouts, 1/100th secs spikes, voltage variation or anything else. The current sent to your devices is precise and regular.
Drawback: you have to change your batteries more often, as they are constantly being used.
There is a warranty for precisely these things. APC's one is really great. Simply the fact that you didn't even tried to send them in before buying one makes me feel like this story is a complete troll. I haven't heard from anyone having problems with APC, and they did save my day more than once.
Have a nice day
Mike