Subject: Re: serial port control
To: Ken Hornstein <kenh@cmf.nrl.navy.mil>
From: Simon J. Gerraty <sjg@quick.com.au>
List: current-users
Date: 02/11/1998 12:44:32
Ken Hornstein writes:
>Y'all should check out:

>http://www.quick.com.au/sjg/apcmon.html

>Okay, it _is_ reverse-engineered, but it works .... and it's supported
>under NetBSD :-)

Thanks for the plug, however I should point out that my apcmon tool
is _not_ reverse-engineered, it simply implements the commands that
were published in an early APC user manual.

There is additional information pointed to at the referenced url
which was obtained by experimentation, but the apcmon tool does
not rely on this.

Ie. to the best of my knowledge, you should have no qualms about
using apcmon.

>One additional comment: if you can afford it, I would go with the APC
>Smart-UPS, because they are a full sine wave UPS, as opposed to the
>Back-UPS (_and_ the Smart-UPS/VS .... I made that mistake :-/).

I'll second the Smart-UPS recommendation, I've used them for some
years and never had a problem - except the day I was trying to get
a serial console going on my gateway box on tty01, and it sent all its
boot messages to the UPS on tty00! :-),  That's when I learned how to 
cancel a soft shutdown ('S') using 'D' :-)

All the APC Smart-UPS's I've seen here came with power chute and
the magic cable included so I've never had to try and build one
(that would take reverse-engineering :-)

--sjg