Thought I'd share a new technical puzzle I've been dealing with.
Something other than ATRAC.
Here's the picture:
About a week ago I was sitting at my computer in the early evening
clearing out my email inbox. Off about a half mile to the north a
pitiful small thunderstorm was trying periodically to put something out.
Maybe a bolt every 5 minutes. For Georgia a yawner.
Lights blink out briefly, there is a snap behind my computer, and
several seconds later the sound of a small bolt off there at the
thunderstorm. My mac, which is on a ferroresanant isolation transformer
does not go down, but the screen freezes. The external modem maintains
it's internet connection. A very brief loss of power in other words. I
reboot and the mac cannot find a HD at all.
After some digging, I unplug the HD's SCSI bus from the Adaptec dual
ultra 160 card and into the regular SCSI card I use for slow stuff. The
mac now can boot up and all the disks, including a external one are ok.
But more investigation reveals the ultra 160 is dead, both buses. Take
the other dual card from my son's G4 and it runs everything fine from
the same slot.
Now we start hunting for other damage. My computer will not talk to the
ethernet lan, Justin's old 8500 also has dead ethernet as does my wife's
work powerbook. Justin's brand new G4 is perfectly ok, although it was
also connected to the lan. The computers are each in different rooms of
the house, all linked to the ethernet lan. The other two computers had
been powered down. For those keeping score, that's three damaged motherboards.
Additional investigation reveals that the Isotel surge protector that
protects our laserprinter and the phone line to my modem has a dead
phone section, as does the one connected to the unharmed G4. The
laserprinter Isotel also was powering the external HD plugged into my
G4, a temp I'd plugged in to test something. That HD had been plugged
into the Ultra 160's other bus. It's on a different wall plug from the
isolation transformer for the G4. Neither of the modems connected to the
damaged Isotel's was harmed. I seem to finally have protected the modems
enough. Everything in the entire system is on good protection for both
power and phone.
So, you have computers that are protected by high end surge protectors
who's power section did not fail or even indicate dealing with a surge,
but two of them lost telephone line pass through even though the modems
are ok (they did their job). My computer is on a very solid and reliable
isolation transformer. Yet there is a fried SCSI card, and a surge ran
around the lan frying ethernet ports. The lan hub is plugged into the
same transformer as my computer. Oh, and two printers on the lan were
also unhurt.
It's a hassle, but I'm properly insured, so everything is covered. But
the question is how did it get in through all the protection? It took me
a day to figure out (I think), and only a brief check with a voltmeter
to confirm. BTW, the whole house also has a overall layer of surge
protection put in by the power company to protect major appliances. I'll
give everybody a chance, you have everything I had. This is a tricky
one, or at least something that had not occurred to me before it
happened. I'll put up my conclusion of the tale tomorrow.
Walt
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