The 6th Ethernet port (em5) on my Lanner fw-7541D died Saturday night
during the electrical storm. Just the one port.
Apparently fried, apparently by an electrical anomaly.
Now, the link light is always on (dimly lit), whether populated or not,
and neither the POST, nor the OS detects the presence of the fifth port.
Interesting how it failed: The fried port 'simply' broke connectivity
for the interface's LAN segment. Everything else continued to work. I
kinda didn't believe the report that Internet was out for the one LAN,
since the other was not. After some testing, I found the system would
not come up after reboot because it had gone into port reassignment mode
since the config made reference to a non-existent interface.
I edited the config in VI to de-reference the interface, and All's well.
I really like this Lanner hardware, and would like to keep it in
service. Ideally I'd like to fix the (now dead) spare port so that I
still have a spare.
Can anyone tell me what's component is typically fried in this scenario?
Is it the NIC controller chip itself? I'm guessing it's not, rather
I'm guessing it's just the big, blocky Ethernet Isolation
transformer/amplifier that's been fried. I'm also guessing that the
reason the system is still functional (at all) is because the little
dude did its job. I know it's a long shot, but I'd like to hear if
anyone has ever repaired a fried Ethernet port on a motherboard.
Also ironic, everything's very well grounded with a dedicated
earth-ground via #6 AWG except the one (damned) switch that services
that one (damned) LAN. I imagine if I'd gone to the trouble of running a
dedicated ground to that switch, it may not have sunk the spike. Any
experience or war stories in this arena appreciated as well. Memo to
myself: Run fiber to switches on different power/earth.
-Karl
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