[RealMac]

UPS Situation
I’m the owner of a APC Back-UPS ES 500 purchased in 2002. A few months ago it started making a fairly loud beeping noise every few seconds. Sort of like the bombs you see on action thriller programs that will detonate any minute now. My first thought is that it was the battery. However I purchased a brand new battery that is rated within specs for this unit from radixgear.com. Mac OS X has built-in software for monitoring the UPS battery. When I started, it read around 87%, but that has been slowly declining ever since. I have the cables hooked up properly according to the manual. Black wire to negative lead, red wire to positive lead. However, even after trying to reset the UPS, is is making a very low-level chirp noise every 5 seconds or so.

I read something about letting it run for 5 hours straight so it can go through a complete self-test cycle, at least that was my interpretation of it.


http://www.therealmac.net/lj/ups.jpg
[ALL inline images must be no wider than 480 pixels. --tooki]

The way I see it, there aren’t a whole lot of options left. The light on the UPS unit does not light up, and the battery backup plus surge protection outlets aren’t working either. Also, the battery isn’t charging at all. I’m pretty sure the unit is out of warranty too. I will have to either find an APC Back-UPS ES 500 without a battery and hope that works, fix this one somehow or invest in another UPS (definitely not buying APC hadware again). Any advice you have would be very helpful.

[Cadaver]

Sounds like the battery or charging system is craping out.

I have two Belkin units, and they are great. Much better than my previous APC units. And they work fine with the Mac's UPS drivers.

[tooki]

A search of APC's tech support site (I selected "BackUPS ES" as the model, and typed "beep" as the question -- real easy!) came up with this, the second hit in the 5 search results:

http://nam-en.apc.com/cgi-bin/nam_en...p;p_faqid=2962

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Answer ID: 2962

1 beep every 5 seconds from a Back-UPS product
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Question: What would cause a Back-UPS Pro, a Back-UPS Pro USB, a Back-UPS RS, a Back-UPS CS, a Back-UPS LS, or A Back-UPS XS to beep once every 5 seconds with no output power?

Answer: One beep every 5 seconds is an indication that the UPS has entered what is called "Low Voltage Sleepmode".

The Back-UPS product has transferred to battery power due to a low voltage condition at the wall. The Back-UPS has remained Onbattery until its runtime was totally exhausted, however, there was still enough voltage present at the wall to trickle charge the battery.

This is considered to be a normal operating state. When the voltage returns to normal the Back-UPS will wake up and restore power to the battery outlets.

It means you have problems with your power. The UPS is fine. Time to call an electrician.


Amazing what a quick search of the manufacturer's own support site can do.

tooki