that was a nice deal to be sure - once you start getting into the serious class of UPSes you can save yourself a lot of trouble. it usually boils down to how much that is going to cost - sounds like you got a steal.

ORIGINAL: Beagle

I have a related question and I hope Susan doesn't mind my semi-hijacking her thread...

How many of you who use battery back up units use the software and connection (either USB or Serial) with it? I have an APC which connects to the computer via USB, but I disconnected the USB cable and disabled the software in the start up apps because I thought it was causing problems during recording/mixing when it was communicating with the unit. I don't know how often it "polled" the unit, but I had no control over it and thought it best to disable it. so my backup runs in manual mode only.

I used APC's software briefly and also the native power management that comes with Windows, with my first UPS. The main effect I noticed was that the back-and-forth communication between PC and UPS seemed to be interrupting disk writes on occasion, that kind of stuff. I uninstalled everything, and haven't missed it.

I'm in the boonies, too, power-wise - outages once in a while, but very likely to have brown-outs. The UPS I'm using (APC's XS-1200) has held things nice and steady more than once, and I haven't lost a thing since I moved to this model.

ORIGINAL: Russell.Whaley ~ ...but very likely to have brown-outs.

Brown outs fry more gear than anything followed by the power surge resulting from power being restored.

For brownouts, a line conditioner like this can really help stabilize your power:

http://www.provantage.com/tripp-lc1800~7TRPC004.htm

Put it ahead of the UPS in the line, and it can help prevent false power-out trips on the UPS unit.

(Not affiliated with Tripp-Lite, nor a tool for TL, just a happy customer.)

That looks like a sweet deal for an 1800 watt unit.

Any noise into your signal chain?

Probably less. It has RFI/EMI noise filtering built in. You're likely to have more noise from ground loops (another topic) than from this.

AC Line > Line Conditioner > UPS > ISO BAR

is how I'd go in an area with both brown outs and black outs.

ORIGINAL: losguy

Wow, no UPS fires here (knock on wood!). Something that may help is to test your UPS more or less regularly (say, once a month). Just pull the UPS plug from the wall / turn off the outlet, and let it do its thing. If it works and it's not getting warm, then it's probably OK. If not, then it's time to replace the battery and/or the whole UPS.

Some units self test. Is it recommended to run a UPS disconnected from the wall? Somehow I got the idea that the unit and whatever is connected to should be grounded.

well from my limited knowledge of electronics, the purpose of a ground is to send over-voltages into the ground rather than into the device or the person operating it. if you are running off batteries that is not an issue, since the battery is unlikely to produce an over-voltage. but again, that's just a guess.

For absolute safety, yeah, it's probably better to put a switch or power strip somewhere between the AC line and the UPS. Then you can test it just by flipping the switch temporarily OFF.

Of course, if the UPS has a self-test feature, then by all means use that.

actually having a powerstrip before the UPS can cause it to fail, at least with APCs. that's happened plenty of times where i work so we finally had a general training not to do that. they work just fine unplugged, i've done that several times for various reasons.