Michael A. Terrell wrote:


One of the computers I refurbished for my 'Computers for Veterans'
project was a small HP. I had everything ready, and turned it on one
last time to run Belarc Advisor to print out the system information. As
soon as I turned it on, flames shot out through the fan. I scrapped
it. In fact, I scrap more HP computers than any other brand.

You say a small HP, was it the kind that allows only one hard drive
and one CD inside (no room for anything more )? If so, it sounds like
a re-badged EVO - seems like a lot of 'modern' mfgs. just change the
name of their crap these days, rather than fix the problem...

I get free, used UPS fairly often, all with bad or missing
batteries. One early unit had eight missing gel cells. they guy who
gave it to me took them out and didn't make a note of what was there, or
how they were wired. His excuse? "I thought all UPS used the same
batteries." The guy is a broadcast engineer. He should klnow better.
The OEM was out of business, so I have a large, heavy rack mount UPS on
the shelf waiting to be scrapped. I am thinking about turning it into a
rack mount server case.

What with the cost and low capacity of the correct replacement gel
cell battery/-ies for most UPS's, I found it works pretty good on the
higher capacity ones to make a hole in the side of the UPS and extend
the battery cables out to some wet cell deep cycle batteries (the 3
UPS's I've got all use 2 12v ones in series). Since the ones I'm
using now aren't industrial quality, I make sure the batteries are
fully charged before initially hooking them up. You need to make sure
there's good ventilation as a hydrogen gas build up could become a BIG
problem.

I got another rack mount UPS the other day. It is an Alpha Ali Plus
700xl The batteries are missing. The OEM doesn't support it. They may
be 12V 7.2AH but I'm not sure. That's too bad, because I picked up a
free Dell 4350 server that I would like to put into a rack with the
UPS. I want a shop server to hold all the drivers and other programs I
use to repair computers, and to learn to administer Apache Server.

What is the difference between a server and a 'normal computer
anyway? I've got a Compaq Proliant DL 380 rack-mounted server (no
rack to mount it in though) I've been hoping to figure out how to use
it like a PC, just out of curiosity as much as anything else.