Serial to USB Cable for Older UPS?

[gwhite_at_alum.mit.edu_apc]

This was originally posted on APC forums on 1/26/2013

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We just got a small network drive box for my wife's home business. It can communicate with APC UPS's via a USB port to shut down the drive if the UPS is running low on battery power during an outage. The UPS is an older Smart UPS 620 Net, which only has a serial port.

My understanding is that the APC UPS's have non-standard serial cable wiring. One option would be to use the APC serial cable that came with the UPS connected to a generic Serial-to-USB adapter. APC also appears to sell some Serial-to-USB cables, but they don't say if they are wired to be compatible with their UPS's. The cable approach would be a lot cleaner, but I'm wary given the non-standard cable issues. There seem to be 2 APC Serial-USB cables, one short one, and one 6 foot one. The 6 footer would be perfect, IF it works.

Does anyone know if the APC cables will work to interface their serial UPS boxes to USB? If not, does anyone have a recommendation for a Serial-to-USB adapter that will work with APC's serial cables?

Thanks!

Message was edited by: gwhite@alum.mit.edu

[BillP · Accepted solution]

This reply was originally posted by Angela on APC forums on 1/28/2013

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the UPS model you mentioned will not have any USB support unfortunately and is not supported with any of the newer serial to USB cables. i can't say i've actually hooked it up and tried though to be completely honest so I cannot share the result.

the serial to USB adapter I use with all of my APC serial cables is a gigaware as seen here -> http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3120513