This post is a bit of a rant on my ongoing HID replacement Saga, but at this point, I’m rather pissed at the dealer, and Toyota corporate.
I’ve owned two Toyota’s in my life ((since I’m only been driving for 10 years, and my Prius is 5 years old at this point…)). I had a ’96 Camry that alas, I wrecked, but got fixed and drove for another couple years. Then, in 2006, I ordered a 2007 Prius Touring that by and large has been a great car… once I got it ((I ordered it, and they proceeded to get in a car for me, only to turn around and sell it to someone else “accidentally”. They managed to get another one a week or two later (or something like that), but offered no real apology for selling “my” car)). But, starting shortly after having it serviced, I started getting the problem where the HID headlights would flicker, and then shut off. You could “fix” this by turning the lights off, and back on… but sometimes they’d go out several times during a night drive, which was no only annoying, but seriously dangerous.
So, I ended up with a SU1400 Smart-UPS as a castoff from campus network services, and alas, it only has a serial (RS-232) port, not USB, and I’m attaching it to a Mac. So, I went online, and found out that lo, APC makes something to address that (only officially, it only works with the Back-UPS models). $37 later, I had the adapter, and plugged it in. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Neither Mac nor PC would see the adapter was there. I figured it was dead, and prepared to RMA. But, on a whim, I decided to try putting a smart-signaling cable between it, and the UPS. Viola! My Mac instantly saw there was a UPS there. So, the adapter must be getting power from the serial side, and not the USB side. Weird.