Nut upsuser - Aug 2005 - Best Fortress LI660VA-Question(s)

Hi,

I recently got a Best Fortress LI660VA which was until then used on an
AS/400 System. It's quite old and even with minimal Load only keeps the
Line for a few seconds -- however, two new (Panasonic) Batteries cost
less than half of what a new UPS will cost and so I decided to keep it.

However, I'd like to run some Monitoring SW for the UPS. No Problem, I
found NUT and was impressed by it's Features.

Unfortunately none of the "Best" Drivers (bestups and bestfcom)
detected
the UPS. So I checked the "UPS Protocols" Part of the NUT-Website -
and
found some interesting Info. However, connections with Minicom was still
not possible. I checked the attached cable and found it was wired
strange (it's an INT0005B) as it only has pins 5, 7, and 9 wired (on the
PC-side) (seems to me it's for "Contact Mode", not for
"Communication
Mode"). So, with the Info from the "Fortress Protocol" I soldered
an
Adapter to Connect: (UPS <-> Sub-D 9-pin) 1 <-> 3, 2 <-> 2, 4
<-> 5. I
also checked the Setpoint 7 is set to "1".

However, no comms is possible with the UPS. I sent dozenz of
"<cr>" and
also "Q"<cr> but without getting any Reply from the UPS.
However, when I
switch the UPS off I get <strange Character>{0001}. I first thought this
was by accident, but it's repeatable.

Now, does anyone here have a hint for the Comms? It seems my Cable is
not 100% OK -- but how must it look like? 

I already Googled a Yahooed but didn't find any help; I also tried to
locate the "old" NUT-Mailinglists Archives to search them but
didn't
find them at all :-(

NB: I know that I might have a write/adapt a Driver if my UPS is not
really supported -- however, I'd first like to make sure I can
Communicate with it before starting this!

Many thanks in advance - I really hope someone here has the Info! 

Cheers,
_ralf_

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On 8/30/05, Ralf Folkerts <ralf.folkerts@gmx.de>
wrote:
> However, no comms is possible with the UPS. I sent dozenz of
"<cr>" and
> also "Q"<cr> but without getting any Reply from the UPS.
Did you turn off hardware and software flow control?

Also, what baud rate did you try? 1200 is common for UPSes.
> However, when I
> switch the UPS off I get <strange Character>{0001}. I first thought
this
> was by accident, but it's repeatable.
Many serial devices will do this when you power them down. I'm not
sure that this is an attempt at communication.
> Now, does anyone here have a hint for the Comms? It seems my Cable is
> not 100% OK -- but how must it look like?
not sure about this, but you might want to use a multimeter to probe
around and make sure that the pin connected to TX on the PC is
somewhere near ground, and the pin connected to RX is at least 3V
above or below ground (I always get mark and space polarity mixed up,
but it should not be at ground).

-- 
- Charles Lepple