Subj : Re: Power issues
To   : ogg
From : Zip
Date : Sat Jul 09 2022 10:15 pm

Hello ogg!

On 09 Jul 2022, ogg said the following...
 og> Had a transformer blow out in our neighborhood this morning. Power was

Ouch!

 og> My BBS was obviously down since I do not have a UPS on it.  I'm looking
 og> for suggestions as to what kind of minimum specs should I be looking for
 og> when I purchase one?

Quite some time ago, when I had a UPS, I purchased one of APC's RS models to get some additional protection against certain line conditions -- it could correct some line conditions without having to switch to battery, if I recall correctly.

But really, any decent-sized UPS with some kind of USB or network
connection (so that a power outage can be detected and preferrably all sensitive devices can shut themselves down before the UPS battery gets completely drained) should do. If you opt for a networked one, make sure to check that the software(s) on your devices are compatible with it.

Typical outage times and your load would determine the size/capacity of it.

I remember having a 500 VA one, which meant approximately 5-10 minutes of runtime on battery for my load back then, which was enough for me (that was for my desktop workstation).

 og> ability to power itself back on when the power is lost.  I've been
 og> through the bios looking for a setting but I confirmed with Dell that
 og> there's not one.  Any suggestions? I suspect that I'm out of luck.

As a last resort (for an unattended BBS machine), you might want to check if there's a power-on timer in the BIOS settings which lets it power up at a certain time every day. That would mean that no outage would last for more than 24 hours in practice, should the laptop run out of battery. Assuming that mains actually does get restored within 24 hours, of course. :-D

Best regards
Zip

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 2022/07/07 (Linux/64)
 * Origin: Star Collision BBS, Uppsala, Sweden (21:1/202)

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