Lawrence "The Dreamer" Chen's Blog

Even though I was up before noon and could do something dangerous, I got lazy and procrastinated the morning away. Continuing the lack of motivation and go out and do stuff, I jumped into the latest equipment shuffle.

I started by turning off the UPS on the left side of my HT rack and seeing what went off. And, then started removing cables and stuff, making sure I knew things were going as expected. Plus there were other cables to nowhere or longer loops caused by the removal of some ReplayTVs and related components.

Then, I moved my 2 TiVo HDs to occupy the void that was once 4 ReplayTVs (at one time 5, but I had removed the dead one some time ago). And, then I swapped the GeekSquad 1285 UPS for the PowerSource 400.

With things powered up, the guage is reading 120W for load. That's pretty good, guess the numbers I pulled off online were a bit too conservative. Means there'll be ample capacity to add another TiVo HD + expander when that time comes. Though alternatively, there is the new void on the right side caused by the movement of a TiVo HD. And, I'm sure the SmartUPS on the right side can handle having a TiVo on it again.

So, it was time to go put the GeekSquad 1285 back into service.

The first plan was to put 'box' on it. And, maybe the monitor. There's an APC BackUPS 1500VA that is powering 'box' and the monitor along with my Windows stack. So, 'box' and monitor needed to move. Ideally, 'box' would go on a PowerSource 400, but that one hasn't been purchased yet. But, once I traced out the cables and discovered some quirks (by accidentally pulling the plug on 'orac'.) I got 'box' and monitor onto the GeekSquad 1285.

Then I noticed the annoyance. The 'silent' icon was no longer lit. Guess that explains why it was making a racket last power outage. Apparently it needs utility power to remember its settings, seems kind of lame. So I got my laptop and set about to reprogram it.

While I was connected I saw that runtime was shorter than I expected the move would get me. Guess 'box' draws quite a lot of power, and the UPS isn't really up to that kind of task. Even though it would also be bad, I ended up putting 'box' onto the PowerSource 400 that backs up the network switch and 'lhaven'. Guess at a future date, I'll move 'box' and switch to a separate PowerSource 400. That'll be fun.

I put the GeekSquad 1285 to back up 'orac' and monitor instead. Interesting that Gnome Power Manager saw the UPS, and seemed to indicate that it knew what to do now. Guess we'll find out next outage. Not sure if that means I should be looking at a UPS other than another PowerSource 400 to protect 'box'. Its a trade off....I would rather 'box' never go down in an extended outage, though it is also modern enough now that it should detect and handle modern UPSs as well.

I guess we'll see when the next impulse hits.

Of course, there's the question of what to do with the now retired CPS1500AVR-HO and CPS700AVR.