Aspies For Freedom

After about four years, my Belkin UPS (battery backup) quit working.  The slightest of the many little brownouts and power farts we get in Florida, and instead of keeping the computer and its peripherals on for just a few seconds, it would go out.

The best I can figure is the battery just won't charge anymore because I tried the simple test of unplugging it, and the battery light blinked (indicating little or no charge) instead of constant-on to mean it's running everything from the battery.

I really didn't want to have to spend money on a UPS, but I was concerned about something like getting a hard drive corrupted if the power gets interrupted while it's writing.  So, I looked for a UPS that's cheap but still a decent design.  Got the Geek Squad (Best Buy's house brand) 875-VA model.  The battery was already fully charged out of the box (the LCD display on this thing tells you that and alot of other info), so I did the unplug test on it with a load (the computer, a CRT monitor, and some peripherals).  Handled it just fine.

Here's the pet peeve:  As nice as the backlit LCD display is, it only stays on for a minute after you press the display button.  I can live with that, but it would have been nice if they had given the user the option of leaving it on all the time.  Maybe I'd like to be able to just glance over at it whenever I want to know the current level of power consumption, instead of having to press that button all the time.  The display itself couldn't use more than a fraction of a watt.

There's probably a way to do this--either by short-ciruciting the switch or sticking some sort of capacitor in there to provide regular pulses.

Nah!  The dark display is annoying but not to the point of wanting to void the warranty or create a fire hazard.  I'll just have to keep that in mind next time I buy a UPS.  If I ever manage to put together the sort of workspace I wish for, I'll need more of these things.

If the battery is dead, get a new one. This is what I did with my UPS when the battery died - just grabbed a new lead acid battery from the local maplins and installed it. I currently have an unhealthy pile of lead acid batteries lieing around here.

I have a little 500va (300w) one powering the general use machine in the next room (P4 @3.2(dual core), 1gb ram, X300); bought it for this machine. whoops. would beep at me during boot (Q6600+8800gts+10,000rpm HDD+3GB RAM = big powerdrain at boot), beep during gaming, keep the computer on for a whole 4 seconds after power outage...insufficent.

but then, it was only £29, so, what did I expect. keeps that other machine on for about a minute twenty though.
must get a decent one...

I considered replacing the battery in the Belkin unit, but couldn't find any place that sells the replacement.  I still have it by the way, so that's still an option when I'm ready for a second UPS.  I don't think Belkin's been doing too good in the UPS market anyway, so it wouldn't surprise me if the part is not available anywhere.  Not even sure if it's the battery that's to blame (could be a circuit board for all I know), because even though there's a red light that's supposed to tell you the battery's no good, I was still getting the green light for normal, even immediately before and after one of those brownouts that caused my computer to shut down abruptly.

As for the unhealthy pile of lead acid batteries, is there a place near you where you can take them for recycling?