*BSD News Article 33775


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From: mark@gcs.com (Mark Bolzern)
Subject: Re: APC UPS owners or potential buyers, trying to show user base
Organization: WorkGroup Solutions (FlagShip) & GCS, Inc.
Date: Tue, 2 Aug 1994 04:38:57 GMT
Message-ID: <Ctw4wy.I26@gcs.com>
References: <316bjc$hlh@thor.tjhsst.edu> <317k55$kq3@news.halcyon.com>
Lines: 28

In article <317k55$kq3@news.halcyon.com>,
Michael Dillon <mpdillon@coho.halcyon.com> wrote:
>In article <316bjc$hlh@thor.tjhsst.edu>,
>Craig Metz <cmetz@thor.tjhsst.edu> wrote:
>>	I had a talk today with Debbie Gray (sp?) of American Power Conversion
>>regarding trying to get information on how to communicate with their Smart
>>UPS products' onboard controllers in order to write a Linux driver. APC is
>>one of the *many* manufacturers that plays the old NDA game, i.e., ``we
>>consider that to be proprietary information that we have to protect''. H
>
>Really now! Those boxes use an RS-232 interface, right? What do they tell 
>the computer? If they only communicate one thing (power fail) then it
>is probably something as simple as shorting the RD and SD lines. Get a
>technician to check it out for you while you pull the plug.
>
>If they are giving more info than that, then it probably can be 
>reverse engineered with simple program to monitor the incoming 
>serial port.

Older UPS were that way.... but the Best, and APC do a lot more talking than
that.  They communicate status, load, testing, and tons more.  They literally
have dedicated computers inside, fully capable of conversing.

-- 
Mark Bolzern :  mark@gcs.com    USA Tel: (303) 699-7470  Fax: (303) 699-2793 
WorkGroup Solutions, Inc.       The FlagShip "Clipper and XBase on Unix" People
  FlagShip is a 4GL Database Development System & Xbase Porting Tool for Unix
No Runtime Fees   Info at ftp.wgs.com : /pub2/wgs/Filelist OR mail: info@wgs.com