SUCCESSFUL!!

I absolutely love D.I.Y. repair! I have been taking things apart and putting them back together for as far back as I remember. You often hear people say they were good at taking things apart and not being able to put them back, or reassembling them and ending up with useless junk? That isn't/wasn't me. Today's repair of my uninterruptible power supply (UPS) was so successful it gave me a rush.

The Story before today...

Every August, myself and two others build and run a cyber cafe called Mystic Mail at the Pennsic War. It is very anachronistic to have such a business at this event, but after having run it succesfully for nine years (and still going strong) I can say honestly that it is needed there.

One of the hidden benefits is that we offer filtered power, via an Exide Electronics Powerware Prestige 1000VA UPS. This device was bequeathed to me while I was working for Exide as a programmer / internet administrator. What makes this kind of UPS special is that it is an on-line technology, meaning that it converts its power from AC to DC and back to AC all the time. It is less efficient than standard off-the-shelf UPS's but it is much more stable and reliable. At 1000VA it can support about 700 watts of our electrical needs, which isn't everything but it does cover a lot of the essentials.

This year, a mouse got into my storage unit and ate new holes in the roof of my canvas tent, which makes up Mystic Mail. The holes, unfortunately, were right over where the UPS was located. And as you can guess, it rained during the event and the UPS got wet one day. I wiped it dry and hoped for the best. It kept on running and I thought nothing of it. It lasted the entire event, thankfully. I packed it up, took it home, and plugged it in to return it to service on one of our servers. No go! Apparently the rain had done more damage than I thought.

I took it apart that day, saw that there was some corrosion but no remaining water. All my tests showed it was essentially brain dead. I had no idea how to fix it. The UPS got shelved, and I started scanning eBay auctions for a replacement. On eBay the same unit goes for about $250 without batteries. New on-line UPS models of the same wattage (modern day units) go for $500-600. I resigned myself to spending a lot of money someday soon to replace it.

Yesterday I had an epiphany out of the blue -- why not assume the water only damaged the PC board tracking and see if I could repair any that were totally eroded? The area of damage didn't look all that great. So this morning I took the UPS apart again and started testing traces with my meter. Beeep. Beeeeeep. Beep. Bep. Beeep. (silence). Beeeep.

After my poking around, I found only one trace so badly eroded that it needed to be hardwired. The operation took about 5 minutes. When I plugged in the UPS and it started working again, I was practically jumping for joy. Why not! I had just saved myself a good $300-500.

I celebrated by immediately spending $300 on cave diving gear I'd been waffling about buying. My little contribution to economic recovery.