Good UPS software is a hard thing to find. I've used apcupsd[1] quite a bit. As far as being able to talk with the UPS with any cable, this is my choice. I've used it under Linux and OpenBSD listening to a BackUPS Pro series using smart signalling over the 0095 cable. Another good piece of UPS software seems to be NUTS[2]. I haven't used it much in production because of cabling issues, but it looked promising a few years ago. Nate [1]. http://www.apcupsd.com/ [2]. http://www.exploits.org/nut/