From: "Mike O'Connor" <os2-wireless_users@2rosenthals.com>
Message-ID: <4BAC33CC.4070800@austarnet.com.au>
Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2010 14:10:52 +1000
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To: OS/2 Wireless Users Mailing List <os2-wireless_users@2rosenthals.com>
Subject: Re: [OS2Wireless] Wireless router (mainly OFF TOPIC)
References: <list-2293908@2rosenthals.com>
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chekmarx wrote:
> Hi Mike,
>
> Wow!  That's all I can think to say about such a massive lightening 
> strike and the negative results.  No, that's not true.  I think you 
> just convinced me to do two things:
>
> 1] Buy a UPS regardless of the physical size of the unit and find room 
> for it no matter what!
> 2] Get myself some renter's insurance, regardless of the monthly or 
> yearly premium!
>
> If I got hit with lightening even only somewhat as powerful as you 
> just described and lost my musical and computer gear I'd be looking in 
> the neighborhood of $5 to $6 thousand to replace everything.  And some 
> of the gear is nearly irreplaceable.  The Les-Paul guitar I own for 
> instance increases in value every quarter of the year.  Models like 
> mine run from $2000 to $10,000 depending on age and condition.  Gibson 
> Les-Paul's are pretty much worth their weight in gold.  Go to 
> www.musiciansfriend.com <http://www.musiciansfriend.com> and take a 
> look at the range of prices and you will be blown away.  Even their 
> "Studio" models, which are basic pieces with all the sonic qualities 
> of the more expensive models, they just lack the physical "beauty" of 
> their pricier kin go for at least a grand and up.
>
> So basically, you have scared the crap out of me!  You'd think with 
> all my years of experience of working professionally with computers 
> I'd know better than to tempt fate.  But at all the large firms I 
> worked at we had *HUGE* power conditioners and a power outage due to 
> any reason just wasn't something we ever had to worry about.  Out of 
> sight, so out of mind basically ....
>
> Do you have any quick methods of how-to size up what power-level of 
> UPS to buy?  I know I can go to google.com <http://google.com> and 
> find the info but if you have some quick method off the top of your 
> head it will save me the time of reading and figuring out for myself 
> what I need.  Not to mention the fact that also I trust your judgment 
> more so than what I might find on the 'net.
>
> Thanks Mike, seriously!  You've knocked some digital sense into this 
> old brain-pan of mine, and for that I am grateful.  I'd be sick if I 
> lost even half of my gear!
>
> Greg

Hi Greg,

Luckily I contacted my Insurance company (house + contents) within 3 
weeks or so, and they told me they would cover it all under the contents 
policy, as long as I got a certified "Computer Insurance Assessor" in to 
determine the the extent of the damage to my computer systems - he 
provided a PDF report on the damage and another detailing his 
recommendations for appropriate replacement of 3 systems(3 x HP dx5150MT 
Business Desktops with Athlon 64 3200+, two SCSI HBAs (2 x 29160LP) 
...... totalled about $AU 7,000 and then I had to haggle with the 
insurance as to which of their preferred suppliers would get the 
contract - from one of the quotations it was obvious they didn't know 
the difference between a 68-pin cable/HBA LVD and a plain old 50-PIN 
SCSI! :-D  I opted to replace the monitors with lighter 17" Samsung 
740Ns (1280 x 1024) and eventually by the end of june 2006 I had all the 
bits and pieces and could start recovering data/software off the 
undamaged HDDs, and attempting to get anything off the damaged ones!

I spent time chasing around on the web looking at features / prices / 
specifications and determined from their configurators that the 800VA 
Blazers (which have Windows 32 + linux software for monitoring and 
control via RS-232C serial cable - reporting via e-mail/SMS) gave me 
adequate time to manually shut down the OS/2-eCS systems cleanly. I did 
a few dummy runs by cutting the power at the mains to determine what 
period the battery would continue to support two Desktops and 2 monitors 
- can't remember the actual interval - but plenty adequate!

Any one UPC can control any other on the LAN - both W32 and Linux work 
fine - and I almost got eCS to install - they're Java applications, but 
I didn't have enough time to devote to hacking it to work with eCS.

At that time almost 4 years ago the Blazer 800VA were AU$219.00 (can't 
remember what the exchange rate was then but probably circa AUD1.00 >> 
USD 0.70. The APC ones were priced out of my league! I imagine prices 
have dropped in the interim too.

HTH

Regards,
Mike

Regards,.
Mike

-- 
Failed the exam for
--------------------
MCSE - Minesweeper Consultant and Solitaire Expert
--------------------
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