Toasted/Roasted computer parts

[Reschke]

Well this past Saturday night was very interesting to say the least. I fell asleep on the sofa just before a nice lightning filled thunderstorm came through the area. I did not hear a single thing and finally went to bed during a dead time in the series of storms.

Well when I woke up to head to church on Sunday morning I went into the kitchen/playroom area where the computer is located and noticed the most awful smell. As you can guess there were some parts that were blackend but not cajun style.

To start off I lost my APC surge arrest/protector. Then my power supply and the associated connections on the motherboard. I also had a melted 80 pin IDE cable going to my nearly full 13.6GB hard drive (fortunately the 80GB was sitting on the shelf waiting on installation this week) with all the webiste/email information on it for the company my wife works for. As well as games and other stuff.

So now I get to drop a some change on the new hardware and let the insurance company pick up the bill. All I gotta do is tell them how much it is and they write out the check once they see the invoice.

[Vermillion]

Please don't tell me that *it* got fried?

[Reschke]

Not sure yet Verm. I gotta see if I can even unplug the drive from the cable first. When I say the cable got melted I mean it got melted. When I looked at the cable I could not tell the difference between the previously yellow sheathing and the wires inside it. I am sitting here at work thinking about the same thing.

As for the "IT" you are not the only one who is worrying. If I lost it all; I lost a few thousand dollars worth of advertising for the retail store my wife works for here in town.

Oh and BTW I was nearly finished with it as of thursday night.

[Reschke]

Right now the home PC is what I built for my mother-in-law a few years ago.

AMD K63-400 with 128MB RAM and regular 8MB video card that would barely run Jane's Fighter Anthology back in 1998 and it locked up every time I went into a building in Rainbow Six back then also.

[Gunthr]

That sucks. I think I'll be a little quicker unplugging my box next storm.

[Reschke]

Thats just it. I did not wake up but everyone in the entire house did apparently when lightning hit the power lines right outside the house. My wife told me that the power flickered but stayed on.

The last thing I knew before fell asleep was that Jimmy Johnson had won the $1 million Winston Shoot Out at Lowe's Speedway. The next thing I now she is hitting me on the head to tell me to go to the bedroom and sleep because she needed the sofa. Since she is due with #2 this week I gave it up to her.

[Vermillion]

Damn sorry to hear that Reschke.    Not just for "it" but for all your other work and having to replace a computer.  I've been there, it sucks.  If the cable is literally melted, its about 99% likely that the disk itself is terminal.

I'm so paranoid about losing the project to a computer failure, that I make daily backups to CDR, and keep a concurrent copy on at least two different computers, each in a different physical location.

Let me know how things go.

[Eagler]

Lightning DOES strike the same place twice

whatever circumstances caused that bolt to ground out through your gear is still there

have the power and cable companies check their grounds

unplugging your stuff from power will break the loop and protect it bout 95% of the time but for total protection you need to disco the power and the cable line from your gear

[Reschke]

Thanks for the heads up Eagler. My home insurance company already suggested that and they are waiting on me to send them the invoice for the parts so they can reimburse me for it. I thought about contacting APC but I think the warranty has expired and I can't find any of the paperwork since we moved. This is what I had (only black) as my surge protector. I have also lost my printer since it was connected into the same protector but I was about to buy a new digital printer anyway for some work related things.