invalid boot sequence

[Leo Enticknap]

The fact that the UPS shows a full battery does not mean that the battery works unfortunately. The only way to check is to do as I suggested.

You can buy 12V lead acid battery testers such as this one, that will put it under a simulated load and tell you if it's deep discharged beyond redemption.

BTW: the fact that a manufacturer "discontinues" a product which works perfectly fine and just needs some batteries to work again should be made ILLEGAL.

I'm not sure that I'd go that far. I have no problem with a manufacturer discontinuing spares support for a given product and washing their corporate hands of it, just as long as they don't take active steps to make it difficult or impossible for the owner to repair it using aftermarket parts. So, for example, if a hard drive in a DSS200 goes bad, I can replace it with a third party one. The log analyzer will meow and hiss about how it's not approved, but it won't stop me from using it. However, if a manufacturer were to build into the firmware a means whereby if you connect a drive that the OEM did not sell you, it will not see it, then I'd be all for outlawing that.

[Bob Ezra]

Marco, your test is tough because it's a 220 v ups.
Leo are the ups batteries 12v lead acid?

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Manufacturers do that because the supply chain either has been notified of the discontinuance of said part, or it is already out of stock and NLA. Lots of the chips used in Digital Cinema are very obscure and either not used at all or barely used in other equipment. It generally does not pay to have an entire run of semiconductors produced for one manufactures.

[Randy Stankey]

BTW: the fact that a manufacturer "discontinues" a product which works perfectly fine and just needs some batteries to work again should be made ILLEGAL.

Isn't there a rule that, when car manufacturers discontinue a line of vehicles, they have to ensure that there are enough spare parts for that car available to last a certain number of years? I believe that there is.

Many car parts are standardized. Tires, spark plugs, filters and similar things are made that fit many different models of cars. That leaves, mostly, the specialized parts for a certain vehicle. The burden of producing specialized parts for a particular make of car would be reduced, that way. Then, of course, many car parts are recycled from junked cars. It's quite possible to keep an old car running for ten or more years, this way.

Why shouldn't other manufacturers have to follow the same rules?

[Leo Enticknap]

In many jurisdictions, the laws and regulations applying to products sold directly to consumers can be significantly different from those regulating industrial products sold to, and intended for use by, businesses. The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act is one example, as is California's lemon law: in most cases, they only cover products sold directly to private individuals, not businesses (though automobiles sold to either are covered by the lemon law). I'm guessing the rationale to be that applying consumer level protections to business machinery (e.g. digital cinema projectors) is fundamentally unnecessary, and would drive up the cost of them to the point of damaging the business models of both the vendor and the purchaser. It would act as a drag on the vendor developing and marketing replacement products (because of the ongoing cost of continuing to fully support the old one), and the purchaser is better equipped to plan for ongoing running costs of maintenance and repair than the purchaser of a mass manufactured consumer item like a washing machine or a fridge.

Leo are the ups batteries 12v lead acid?

All the models I've ever replaced batteries in are. For example, the model we would typically install in a projector pedestal uses two of these.

[Marco Giustini]

Marco, your test is tough because it's a 220 v ups.
Leo are the ups batteries 12v lead acid?

I'm sorry but no, that's what the UPS is designed to do.

Just to make sure you understand, I am not asking you to do anything weird with the UPS, just unplug it and make sure the batteries work. I live in a 220V country as well (240V actually) and that's what UPS do.

Just make sure you have something plugged into the UPS which is draining some power but which can withstand a power cut.

You can buy 12V lead acid battery testers such as this one, that will put it under a simulated load and tell you if it's deep discharged beyond redemption.

Sure. But a simple test is to pull the plug and see if the UPS stays on

I'm not sure that I'd go that far. I have no problem with a manufacturer discontinuing spares support for a given product and washing their corporate hands of it, just as long as they don't take active steps to make it difficult or impossible for the owner to repair it using aftermarket parts. So, for example, if a hard drive in a DSS200 goes bad, I can replace it with a third party one. The log analyzer will meow and hiss about how it's not approved, but it won't stop me from using it. However, if a manufacturer were to build into the firmware a means whereby if you connect a drive that the OEM did not sell you, it will not see it, then I'd be all for outlawing that.

While I do not disagree with you, our planet's resources are limited. It's a battery. We have batteries. We cannot bin a perfectly working unit because of that, full stop.

[Bob Ezra]

Thanks Leo, helpful

[Bob Ezra]

Marco, now I get it...simple

[Marcel Birgelen]

While I do not disagree with you, our planet's resources are limited. It's a battery. We have batteries. We cannot bin a perfectly working unit because of that, full stop.

I'm all for trying to repair stuff instead of throwing it into the bin. Corporate customers may be different here, they want to have supported hardware and once it enters the end-of-support phase, they'll phase it out and replace it with something else, even if it probably still has many years of productive life left.

Regarding UPSes, I've got another opinion about those beasts: Once the warranty is done, throw them out, good or not. As I've stated in another topic, I've had some serious incidents with UPSes and as long as you use them conforming to specs and not start to fiddle with them yourself, the insurance company has one less reason to screw you over, when stuff goes up in flames.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

No one here stopped to consider that most server farm servers are replaced every two to three years. It is usually done to cut power consumption, heat, and because newer is always faster. This can be in the thousands to tens of thousands of servers. As far as batteries go, the USA sucks at battery recycling. Most get tossed in the trash, and some are taken to battery recyclers of sorts. The U.S. really needs to buckle down and get it together on this, especially because the lithium shouldbe reclaimed. As for repairing a bad UPS, it's usually not worth the time. And at least two manufacturers I've dealt with mark most parts just with their own P.N.. And if you service lots of screens, then the battery tester that Leo posted is a must.

[Leo Enticknap]

Totally agree about battery recycling. Even on a domestic level, until just before the pandemic, my local Home Depot and Lowe's both had battery recycling bins, into which I could put my used AAs, button batteries, UPS batteries, worn out laptop batteries, etc. Then one disappeared, followed by the other. The lady at Lowe's told me that the recycler had started to charge them for taking the batteries away (previously, they had paid the store for them), and so they couldn't continue with the arrangement. Even the city yard (which still accepts used engine oil) won't take them. I simply don't know of anywhere within a reasonable drive of my home that I can take them to be recycled. As of now I put them in my domestic recycling can, in the hope that they will be separated and sent to a battery recycling facility.

Marcel has a good point. It would be helpful if the manufacturers could offer an official refurbishment program for end of warranty UPS units, to address those insurance concerns. But that would cut into sales of new ones, so they likely won't.

[Randy Stankey]

Okay, if I owned, say, Hilton Hotels and I bought a fleet of Chevy 14-passenger vans to use as a fleet of courtesy shuttles in 2024 but, in 2025 Chevrolet discontinues their entire line of cargo/passenger vans, does that mean I'm ass-out when it comes time to repair those vehicles, simply because I'm not a private consumer?
(Chevrolet has announced that their passenger/cargo van is slated for discontinuation in 2025.)

Does Chevrolet not have an obligation to ensure that repair parts are available for a certain time, after the vehicle is discontinued?

Similarly, if I owned Cinemark and I bought a "fleet" of digital projectors for my theaters which get discontinued soon after I bought them, should the manufacturer be able to say, "Too bad," simply because I'm not a private consumer?

Shouldn't the projector manufacturer have a similar rule to follow as an automaker?

Shouldn't there be a reliable way to get repair parts, either OEM, recycled or aftermarket, for a certain period of time?

It shouldn't make a difference whether I am a private individual or a business.

[Leo Enticknap]

The thinking is that private consumers need legal protection in what would otherwise be a one-sided battle, whereas it's less of a one-sided battle between businesses. For example and as I understand it, the projector manufacturers have only agreed to keep spares support for many of their Series 2 xenon machines available until the back end of this decade because a crap ton of them were sold and installed under VPF contracts, and those contracts specify a period of support during which the OEM is required to maintain a parts inventory and keep them available. If you are Hilton Hotels buying a fleet of several hundred minibuses, that purchasing power would give you the ability to make Chevy undertake to provide parts support for a given period of time. If you're a private individual buying only one of them, not so much.

With autos specifically, there is such a large and competitive aftermarket parts sector, that forced obsolescence / right to repair concerns are less of an issue than with many other technologies. I recently had to buy a bunch of parts for my father-in-law's 1991 Toyota Pickup, and was able to get all of them on Scamazon, delivered the following day. If getting parts for a 31-year old vehicle (albeit a very popular one, of which thousands are still on the road) is that easy, it illustrates the effect of economies of scale: the more units of a given machine entered service in the first place, the longer it will likely be possible to maintain and fix them.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Well, Cutting in on the sales of new devices would quickly end the perpetual forward motion these manufacturers require to stay in business. Setting up second party entities to repair/rebuild them would be better. In UPS's most of the switching devices are marked with factory numbers, or not marked at all. So problems like this need to be rectified (pun intended)... perhaps by laws to protect the reparability for these second party entities. .

[Marcel Birgelen]

This "forward motion" should offer more incentive than just to replace what I have with just the same thing. If I replace e.g. my current projector with a new one, I expect to get the benefits of technological progress. E.g. a better picture, less electricity use, etc. etc.

One thing we need to change though is how we think about product lifecyclles. If we want them to be perpetual, the way how we recycle material and minimize the ecological footprint of what we're doing needs to become part of the process.