[Nut-upsdev] Megatec driver status [was: Re: UPS (Megatec) with strange voltage values]

[Arnaud Quette]

Hi Carlos,

2008/10/20 Carlos Rodrigues <cefrodrigues at gmail.com>:
> On Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 1:35 PM, Arjen de Korte <nut+devel at de-korte.org> wrote:
>> Citeren Carlos Rodrigues <cefrodrigues at gmail.com>:
>>
>>> BTW, the patch has a small typo in one of the comments: "applied to
>>> battery.volage" :)
>>
>> I'll leave that up to you to correct. Since it is only a comment, it won't
>> be visible to innocent users anyway. :-)
>>
>> What we might want to do, is to change the multiplier based on the
>> information we already have. Looking at the BatteryVolts_t structure, it
>> looks like there are some models for which we can preset a multiplier. One
>> of them even reports a wrong nominal battery voltage (12V instead of 24V),
>> we might even correct that.
>
> Now, I think I should take the opportunity to ask if any of the people
> reading this list is willing to help test the megatec driver, or even
> take maintainership of it.
>
> For a while now I've been using a virtual machine to test changes to
> the driver, but now I don't have a machine with a serial port anymore,
> so I'm unable to test with real hardware (even from inside a VM). I
> could, of course, buy myself a usb-to-serial converter, but must say
> I've been lacking time as of late so, after ~5 years maintaining this
> driver (~3 years inside NUT mainline, thanks guys) I guess it's time
> to pass it on to someone else.
>
> The megatec driver is pretty much a done deal, all the new stuff
> should happen in the megatec_usb driver (for which I'm not the
> maintainer). I guess whomever picks up official maintainership of this
> driver could also pick up megatec proper. It makes sense, for me at
> least.
>
> There are still some small things pending in megatec however, that I
> can do myself provided someone helps testing with real hardware:
>
> 1) Adding another parameter to set the pace for serial communications
> (see the thread mentioned in the subject);
> 2) Mark the Battvolts_t structure as deprecated/legacy and add the
> battvolts values for the UPSes listed in the comments to the
> compatibility list (I don't think this structure should be changed
> going forward, it is only useful for a small number of users, totaly
> useless for the majority of users, and confusing for the rest);
> 3) Adding some more models to the compatibility list (I have one or
> two pending).
>
> So, nothing special. I'll drop a patch to the list instead of
> commiting immediately, since I don't like commiting untested stuff
> (even if they look simple at a glance).
>
> Any comments?

first, thanks for taking the time to clarify the situation.
and also for all your hard work during all these years. I recall that
the initial megatec creation was something hard, and I had to bother
you a lot on this. But the results are there, and it has greatly
simplified the drivers list.

@Alex and Jon: what do you think about Carlos proposition?

thanks,
Arnaud
-- 
Linux / Unix Expert R&D - MGE Office Protection Systems - http://www.mgeops.com
Network UPS Tools (NUT) Project Leader - http://www.networkupstools.org/
Debian Developer - http://people.debian.org/~aquette/
Free Software Developer - http://arnaud.quette.free.fr/