Power surges and NICs

[JUC]

I just had a power surge last night and it appears that my NIC got fried. I'm connected to a surge protector and nothing else appears to be wrong but I cannot get any data to send/receive out of my server. Actually, it says it is sending some packets but not receivign any. Can't connect to my network or via VNC. I connected the ethernet cable to my laptop just to rule out the cabling and it connected to my network fine. So, can a surge dammage a NIC and nothing else? Luckily i have a PCI ethernet card that I will try tonight but it just seems wierd. I have been having power surges, outages a lot over the past weeks and haven't had a problem.
Thanks
JUC

[lovingHDTV]

I had a power surge about 1 year ago and it blew every NIC on my network. Everything else worked fine, just lost my NICs. Unfortionately, they were all integrated, now I have a PCI slot taken up by a NIC in every system

So I would say, yes it can happen

[JUC]

well, that's what happened i guess....--once i install my PCI card I will be down to 0 available PCI slots. I guess a PVR 500 is my next option for expanding my setup.
JUC

[waynedunham]

I've had several hits in the past. Always lightning strikes, i.e. REALLY big surges!

It's strange what will and won't get hit. For instance a TV I had in my bedroom got zapped twice while nothing else on the circuit got hit. I heard it "pop" both times just as lightning struck in the area. Both times it was off at the time too!

I've lost a modem on my main PC once, and everything on the PC including the modem power and phone line went through an APC. They replaced the modem and my APC because they wanted the APC back to see if they could figure out how it got through.

I had a VCR get zapped while nothing else in the entertainment center (TV, 2nd VCR, Receiver, Tape Deck, DVD) had any damage. If I recall that was the same time as one of the hits on the TV in the bedroom.

These were all at my present house. After so many frequent hits I started doing some searching and found out the moron who installed the lightning arresters on the roof (there when I bought it) were grounded to the house service ground! So any lightning strike was surging right through the ground circuit to my entire house!!

[JUC]

i'm assuming you got that fixed right? that's just bad work all around. At least you didn't loose your entire entertainment centers--which seems like it definately could have happened. Guess i'm lucky only my NIC got hit.
JUC

[michelkenny]

Originally Posted by JUC

--once i install my PCI card I will be down to 0 available PCI slots.

You can get wired USB NICs for pretty cheap these days. If the new PCI nic fixes your problem you may want to end up with a USB adapter instead to save your PCI slot for something more important.

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by JUC

i'm assuming you got that fixed right? that's just bad work all around. At least you didn't loose your entire entertainment centers--which seems like it definately could have happened. Guess i'm lucky only my NIC got hit.

Yep! It didn't sound right to me so I called someone I work with who's an electrician and he told me that it was wrong and that it should have at least 2 seperate grounds completely isolated from the house wiring away from the house. I forget the exact distance, but I think it was 30-50 feet from the house.

My house is on a hill and when it was built it was probably the highest thing around for quite a distance and the lightning arresters made good sense. (if they'd been installed properly) However now over 40 years later the house is surrounded by trees that are 50 feet or more taller than the house.
I needed a new roof anyway so I cut the wires leading from the roof and then removed them when the new roof was installed.

Since removing that from my house ground I haven't had anything get hit in well over 7 years. All those events listed were within the first 3-5 years I lived here.

[m0ng00se30]

Originally Posted by michelkenny

You can get wired USB NICs for pretty cheap these days. If the new PCI nic fixes your problem you may want to end up with a USB adapter instead to save your PCI slot for something more important.

I've had this issue twice now... and tried to use a USB to ETHERNET adapter. It was insanely slow!! I tried 2 different kinds of adapters thinking that the first couldn't be that slow. I ran a belkin and a some other brand. Maybe it was something to do with my machine, but I would dbl check the return policy just in case. They couldn't keep up with my 6Mb cable modem... so we won't even discuss the 100Mb LAN.

--Mike

[acrowe]

If you get a USB NIC make sure its USB2. USB1 only supports 12MB/s so think closer to 3 or 4 if you're lucky.