APC AP9605 PowerNet SNMP Card

In the theme of upgrades, I also purchased two APC SmartUPS1000 units from refurbUPS.com. Now, I know that a lot of people are perfectly happy with serial connectivity. And it has its positives. But I’m running 2-3 servers per UPS, older servers, wanted to be able to monitor the UPSs, and perhaps control server shutdown, over the network.. So, I found that refurbUPS.com also sells SNMP management cards for them. They sell a refurbished AP9605 - it’s an old 10BaseT PowerNet SNMP-only card (with telnet management). Seemed good, and the price of $15 was right.

They showed up, but I couldn’t find much about them online, let alone anything useful.

After a phone call to APC, I managed to get the user’s manual emailed to me. The few instructions I found online were totally wrong.

The general setup goes like this:

1. Connect network cable to card.
2. Connect serial cable between a computer and the UPS’s serial port.
3. Get a terminal emulator, like minicom. Speed is 2400bps.
4. connect and press enter. You’ll be asked for a username and password. Use “apc” for both.
5. 5) Setup the network - IP, mask, gateway, etc.
6. Ready-to-go!

I also have some information about the card on my wiki at: AP9605.