UPS Won't Shut Up.

[Greg_Jones]

We have an Ancient power supply it's made by upguards and is a PRO 1400. But being as old as it is (made for NT and 95) it was installed by previous employees, so naturally no documentation. We got in the office this morning and it's beeping. Four short beeps and a pause for 3 seconds then four short beeps etc etc. As you may guess it's driving us mad, unfortunately unplugging it is not much of an option as we have servers plugged into it...

 

I've had a look on the web but cannot find anything, apart from a website in Romanian trying to sell one... Any help would be grand, we have checked it's plugged in and no unusual lights are on.

 

For the sanity of this office please help.

[Edu-IT]

Perhaps the batteries need to be replaced.

[bizzel]

For a minute there I thought you meant the delivery company...

 

Perhaps it's beeping to tell you it's lost its connection to the server?

[kestrel1]

If it's that old, I expect it is the batteries as suggested above.

[Greg_Jones]

The batery was suspected, thanks for that. We have got clearance to buy a whole new shinny up to date UPS(to our amazement). The new one shall not have beeping enabled....

[Butuz]

Beeping's kinda good - tells you when its having trouble....

 

Butuz

[kestrel1]

My two rackmount UPS's are beeping at me, telling me that the batteries are failing. Yet more money to shell out. Not sure we can afford it though. I will see what reply I get from SMT.

[Edu-IT]

The UPS here is bleeping too.

[webman]

Hmm, ours isn't :?

 

*Withdraws mains power from UPS*

 

*BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP*

 

Our UPS is bleeping too

[sahmeepee]

Our batteries all seem to be reaching the end of their lives at the moment :/ . Fortunately they aren't all like the first one I had to replace which had swelled up inside the chassis and required a screwdriver and two size 11s to remove.

 

I got the latest one from here:

 

http://www.vps-ups.co.uk/

 

They do collection of old batteries for £6.75 too.

[maniac]

You can replace batteries in UPS' really cheaply as they are pretty 'standard' batteries made by a company like yuasa (who actually supply APC in the first place!) If you look on the battery case somewhere, it will have it's battery type stamped on it, (e.g NP18-12B, which is the battery used in the popular RBC11 battery pack.)

 

If you goto a reseller with the battery number, you can buy the betteries for less than 1/2 of the price that APC etc. charge you, and they are exactly the same battery, just in a different coloured case.

 

All you may need to do is use some of the componants from the old packs to make the loose batteries into the 'packs' that come from APC, but it's only a few bolts, a fuse and a couple of wires. Just be careful to wire it all up with the correct polarity.

 

I wouldn't recommend it if your UPS is still under any sort of warrenty, and also if you're not sure about connecting them up, as the ampages in the batteries can cause a lot of damage if you short curcuit them, or connect them up the wrong way round. Be extreemly careful!

 

Mike.

[Greg_Jones]

We considered getting a new battery, but if we get a whole new UPS we will have documentaion and have it connected to the servers properly rather than hopeing they shut down. might be fun to try and replace battery the "maniac" way i like messing about/discovering what i can do, with high voltage equipment.

[richard.thomas]

How strange... Yesterday while i was walking past the server room I heard some beeping, went in and it was the UPS... Maybe they're all talking to each other?