Mac OS X 10.5 software

[BillP]

I just received a BR800BLK APC UPS. The PowerChute software that's included is for OS X, 10.4, which hasn't been sold in almost two years. Will this work on 10.5.7? Are there updates available? I'm unable to find them on the web site.

[BillP]

Welcome to the APC Forum Karl.

If you want to enabled graceful shutdown on your Mac PC the software option that you can use is the Energy Saver. This is a native program that comes free with Mac OS.

[BillP]

I'm well aware of that. I understand, however, that PowerChute shuts the computer off when there's a power failure. Energy Saver allows the computer to go to sleep after a specified time period. If the power goes off suddenly, Energy Saver does nothing to address that. That's one of the reasons I bought an APC UPS; so it's shut down if I'm not at home, while the computer is in sleep mode, or if I go out temporarily and lose power. Mac OS X, 10.5.7, has been out since Oct. 2007. APC hasn't updated the software since then?

[BillP]

Karl,

I found a link on our knowledge base on how to setup the Energy Saver, can you check if you have these settings please.

[How to configure native shutdown for Macintosh OS X communicating with Back-UPS|http://nam-en.apc.com/cgi-bin/nam_en.cfg/php/enduser/fattach_adp.php?p_sid=pJ1WcdEj&p_accessibility=...]

[BillP]

I do have the settings. To my chagrin, I apparently missed the step about plugging the data cable into a USB port. When I plugged it in, I found the settings, and configured them. I temporarily unplugged the computer and a pop-up box warned me that my computer was running on reserve power. One more question; if I have unsaved documents, will the computer still shut down, and are the documents then lost?

Thank you very much for your help.

[BillP]

You are welcome Karl.

I tried the Energy Saver in our lab and it didn't saved my open documents. Though I remember from one of my customer using a program called Deep Sleep to achieve this function.

[Anonymous user]

I just received a Back-Ups ES 750 yesterday and hooked it up to my MacBook, which is running OS X 10.5.8. I did at first install/uninstall the PowerChute software that came with the UPS. I then tried to configure using the operating system's Energy Saver. When I select UPS from Energy Saver, the energy settings "Sleep" and "Options" are active to accommodate changes. When I select the energy setting "UPS", I then see below the UPS battery level (100%) and the UPS model "Back-UPS ES 750 FW:841.I3 .D USB FW:I3" Below that, the choices for "Shutdown the computer when it has been on UPS power for:" AND "Shutdown the computer when the time left on UPS power is:" AND "Shutdown the computer when the UPS power level drops to:" are all greyed out, which prevents any changes. And yes, the "Click the lock to prevent further changes" is UNLOCKED. I have been looking through various threads on this issue and have not found a response to this issue. Right now, what I have is a UPS which will only delay the inevitable of loss of power with no graceful shutdown.

[Anonymous user]

Hi Karl,

Just got an APC UPS. I'm running 10.6 and follow the instructions you suggested. However, even though there is an UPS menu in the Energy Saver the options shown do not include any related to shutting down the Mac. In fact, they look like the ones for the Battery menu (See attached file). Do you have any instructions, or suggestions for Snow Leopard?

Thanks,

Jose

[Anonymous user]

Hi Jose,

Do you have a MacBook or MacBook Pro? If you are using either one, I have learned that there are no options under "Energy Saver" to safely shut down computer due to power line fail. I believe the rationale is that because the MacBook and MacBook Pro contain a battery, there is no need. I use a MacBook as my desktop computer and I have several external drives connected to MacBook. With my UPS, I was hoping to have my MacBook automatically shutdown in event of power line fail which in turn would safely shut down my external drives. Unless APC has come up with a solution, you may want to check out APCUPSD. Depending on your level of expertise in computers, this may be a solution for you.

Good luck!

Jaycee2u

[voidstar_apc · Accepted solution]

Yeah, I noticed that when I attempted to test APC's UPSes with my Macbook Pro. Needing to use a desktop computer is a pain, but I guess it makes some sense: as soon as the UPS batteries die, the Macbook Pro will run on batteries until it reaches low battery and goes to sleep to preserve battery life. Unfortunately that would seem to be a problem for external hard disks! Would be nice if there were an option to unmount them when the UPS battery goes low.