My DSL Modem died

Mousey

Ueber Meister Mouse
Joined
Sep 12, 2004
Location
Up$hitCreek
We had horrible thunderstorms Monday night. When I got up Tues. a.m. the modem (for those into specifics, it's an Actiontec 724wg) was black. No lights. Did the usual reset, power cycle, plugged the bump into another receptacle on the UPS, plugged it directly into the wall.... 'It's dead, Jim'. So my ISP is sending me another, should be here tomorrow. (I'm posting from work.)

Now, what I'm wondering is what happened to it. I don't think it was a power surge as everything else on that UPS (external HDs and printer) are fine. However, I do not plug my dsl/phone cables into the UPS, so perhaps the lightning zapped the phone line? But all my phones are ok. Modem failure may be unrelated to the thunderstorms?

I am concerned that my NIC (on both computers) may have gotten damaged. Won't know that until the modem gets here. I can replace the card on hubby's old WinXP computer, but mine is integrated and I don't think I have a slot open to add a card (should it come down to that) and I haven't opened it up to check. Guess I'll know tomorrow.

Anyway... just a whine.... I hate not having internet at home. :mad:
 
I had a good lightning strike a few years back.
It hit my tree in the backyard & it fried my computer at the same time.& I never lost power or phone.
Thank God for homeowners insurance it paid for a new computer & tree removal.
 
Some of the modern surge protectors also have a socket for plugging in the phone line, so any surges get blocked before reaching the modem.

Seems like a good idea, since the modem is connected to the PC so surges could theoretically travel all the way from the phone line to the modem to the PC and destroy something valuable (like data on a hard drive).

Having a surge-protected UPS but no protection for the phone line is a bit like locking the front door but leaving the back door open :)
 
Damage from lightning may not be immediately obvious. Electronic equipment may work fine for a while and start to fail weeks or months afterwards.
 
My power supply fried my hard drives and the network controller on my old motherboard a couple of years ago. I stuck a 5 dollar network controller card in and was downloading at 5Mb/s or more right up until I built this new computer.

I don't know why people buy these really expensive NICs. My cheapo one worked as well as anything I've ever used.
 
woohoo!! I am on the interwebs!! :D

Everything seems fine on the computers (so far) so maybe I got by with only a minor inconvenience this time.
 

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