I don't know what exactly happened - I was out of the house at the time - but after a severe thunderstorm, I came back to find all NIC's (except 1) that were connected, in the computers only on one end of the house, not working. The computers were all turned off. A 5 port gig switch became a boat anchor. The cable modem's Ethernet port was taken out, but the modem itself just fine - works today from its USB port. And that was the total damage - other applicances and equipment not on surge suppressors was just fine.
So, it didn't come in the AC. It didn't come in on the cable. No telephone lines connected to anything. The only explanation? A near strike's EMP must have induced a damaging voltage in the UTP cabling. I feel lucky that the gig port on a motherboard was the only NIC not affected. I can only guess that a bit of built-in surge protection must be included in the board's design. Carl From: Andrew S. Baker [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, August 04, 2010 8:53 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Guilty, will change after reading this. I had a lightning strike *near* my home that took out an internal modem, and a sound card -- my beloved Gravis UltraSound. I thought the whole PC was dead because the computer would not even turn on with the sound card in the machine. I took everything out to reseat them, and that's how I was able to determine that the sound card was toast (although it didn't smell like toast). Any machine I put it in would just fail to power up at all. The modem didn't cause that problem, but wouldn't dial out anymore. All in all, it was a relatively minor loss that seemed like a whole lot more in the beginning. Oh, and the PC was off at that time, although I hadn't disconnected the modem. My phone, which was connected through the other side of the modem, was spared. -ASB: http://XeeSM.com/AndrewBaker On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 6:07 PM, Ben Scott <[email protected]> wrote: On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 5:53 PM, Raper, Jonathan - Eagle <[email protected]> wrote: > 3. During an ACTUAL strike on the structure, the ambient step potential is > several gazillion volts per foot for dozens of yards. Grounding does not > mitigate this fact. Unplugging does not mitigate this fact. This. We had lightning hit our building once. It fried NICs and hubs all over the place, including in stuff that was switched off. It fried one serial port in one PC (but not the other serial port in the same PC). It causes an electrical outlet with nothing plugged into it to explode out of the wall into little bitty pieces. It fried one phase in a transformer, leaving the other two phases working. It killed AC compressors in the basement. I've also been told by our ISP about an incident where lightning apparently found a fiber cable was the best path to ground, and fried the equipment at one end. "But it's not a conductor." Lighting jumps open air. We're talking millions of volts. At that kind of potential, *everything* is a conductor. Lightning can do whatever the hell it wants to. All bets are off. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
