UPS now installed.

Righto, the shiny new Belkin UPS arrived today. Gave it the full charge up, and it's now installed an working fine.

I initially installed it using the built in OSX UPS support, and it worked as soon as I plugged in the USB lead. However, the menubar info is useless, it just says "unknown time until full". I can set the shutdown details OK in all the sliders too.

However, I have also now installed the BullDog software from Belkin, and that gives so much more control. Again, it just seems to 'work'. I like the Input/Output display, and the ability to shedule battery tests, as well as the 'loading graph. None of which OSX handles.

I have the G5 (with Formac 17" on the ADC port), the external drive box, and my HP widescreen 20" TFT plugged into the Battery Backup sockets, and it's showing 49% loading. I plugged the remaining peripherals, scanner, printer, USB hub and speakers, into the Surge Protect socket, using a plain 5 way block (These are generally only used one at a time, and the scanner and printer are off most of the time).

My only concern is the possible conflict between the two shutdown softwares, so I'll have to have a play with that I think. I might try setting them so that one just never operates.

Paul Russell wrote:

One thing with UPS's - you should test them every few months by pulling the mains supply for a couple of minutes. Otherwise you don't know when the batteries are knackered (until it's too late).

Yes, that's why I set the schedule to run the periodic battery tests :-)

Well, it's not bunging too much load on, so I'll see how it goes. It at least gives me a chance to deal with things manually if I'm around - like saving anything I'm working on. In fact I've just run a quick test there, and it went from running at 48-49% load, down to 45-47% load with the extra monitor off.

Well, the first battery test just ran all OK, and it managed a full 245v output even when the battery got down to 25%. It all kicked in again and is already back up to 73%.

Yes, I probably will. It'd be nice to see if it really does work, and I could do with testing the shutdown feature too (especially as I'm running Bulldog software as well).

Cheers.