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Today, lightning struck my neighbor's house and it burned down. EMP seems to have fried the Ethernet card in my G4 Mac and also disabled Firewire memory card reader. I am not sure if the modem has been affected, I will check by substituting another. External USB hard drive disconnected itself but worked fine once I took the cord out and the re-plugged it.
I have no DSL connection anymore (the service works but neither wireless nor LAN work).
My first question is: where could I get a replacement Ethernet card for my G4 and which kinds would fit?
Second: what's the best way to verify if specific hardware is fried beyond repair?
PS: Fire department came within 15 minutes, but the house was a total loss by then. My own house smells of smoke.
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Whoa! That's a little too close for comfort. Sorry to hear about your peripherals and your neighbor's house. I hope everyone came out OK. I've had a modem fried by lightning. There are some repair places out there that can fix some lightning damaged components, but it may cost more than replacing the card, modem, etc. My brother was an Apple tech support guy - I'll see if he knows anything about it.
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Got PCI slots? Any old thing should work.
This is, of course, just a temporary measure while you work with your insurance company to get your damaged computer replaced. Homeowner's insurance. You got it, right? Time to use it.
I've seen computer equipment that was not immediately fried fail prematurely after electrical damage like that, so you do want to replace it, especially if a motherboard component like the NIC has been damaged.
Second: what's the best way to verify if specific hardware is fried beyond repair?
Take it to a computer service place (in your case, someone familiar with Macs), and have them look at it and write something up for insurance. I do this all the time after major storms. I've never yet had an insurance company balk at paying for a replacement. Just turn in the tech's bill to insurance. The expense of that will be applicable toward the insurance deductable.
If you have a decent surge protector|UPS, you probably also have an equipment protection warranty. The downside of that is that if you have your stuff plugged into anything at all other than that manufacturer's stuff, it will get denied. No having a Tripp Lite surge protector plugged into an APC UPS, for example.
I have no DSL connection anymore (the service works but neither wireless nor LAN work).
Fried dsl modem and router. And your Mac's ethernet -- imagine that. :-).
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would a UPS prevent such an overload from affecting the hardware plugged into it?
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would a UPS prevent such an overload from affecting the hardware plugged into it?
No. The only thing that might help would be a line filter for the ethernet. We have pretty regular lightning strikes in the apartments here on campus. It used to completely toast 40-50 network cards a year in students' computers. Moving from long copper runs to fiber between the buildings has alleviated this problem, but for quite awhile, we strongly recommended line filters in addition to power surge suppressors. I have one that does power, phone, and ethernet. $10 from Radio Shack.
It is really amazing what lightning will do. That copper was buried in conduits that ran 1m below grade, and didn't surface until it was well inside the apartment building. We would have a strike on a tree or a fencepost or even the ground a solid 20 feet away, and it would toast devices on both ends of the cable.
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It is really amazing what lightning will do. That copper was buried in conduits that ran 1m below grade, and didn't surface until it was well inside the apartment building. We would have a strike on a tree or a fencepost or even the ground a solid 20 feet away, and it would toast devices on both ends of the cable.
Lightning does weird things. My rule on cabling is that copper doesn't go a single inch outside a bulding. You convert to fiber or wireless.
Oleg, what type of G4 do you have? Is it a standard tower or one of those oddball shapes that Apple has been putting out recently? For replacements the simplest thing is to find out what model is in it now and order another one. For testing try putting it in another machine if you can.
Which hardware do you want to verify repairability? Everything you mentioned is not something you repair by any other method than replacement.
I don't suppose you have renter's/homeowner's insurance you could file against?
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Oleg,
Sorry to hear about your neighbor's house and about your fried equipment.
Just wanted to add a bit about homeowners insurance.
What LeeNfield suggested makes great sense except for one thing.
Times have changed drastically regarding homeowners and auto insurance.
Used to be we had smaller deductibles and made claims when we had such problems.
Times have changed. Report smallish claims today and the company will payfor them and then NON-renew the policy when it's time to.
Especialy if you make more than one claim within a hew years.
Insurance strategy for today: Increase the deductible to $1000 or $2000 or even more -- to get the premiums down significantly. And pay for the damage yourself.
Today this insurance is only for large claims, in which case the companies don't refuse to re-new. But recurring small claims will get you dumped in more and more cases. Then you must scramble to find new insurance and the companies maintain a database that they (mostly) all access -- so you pay much more for your insurance.
LeeNfield, you must live a quiet life (grin) and so haven't had to deal with this.
Best regards to you both.
matis
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Based on experiences like this when I was a field systems engineer for Comcast, I HIGHLY recommend placing a properly-grounded Ethernet surge suppressor between one's cable or DSL modem and PC or router. APC makes one that goes for ~$20 - $25. After we started using these in our commercial cable modem deployments, the incidence of fried routers dropped to almost zero.
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Based on experiences like this when I was a field systems engineer for Comcast, I HIGHLY recommend placing a properly-grounded Ethernet surge suppressor between one's cable or DSL modem and PC or router. APC makes one that goes for ~$20 - $25. After we started using these in our commercial cable modem deployments, the incidence of fried routers dropped to almost zero.
Dave,
Is this what you're talking about?
http://www.apc.com/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=PNET1
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Yikes, that sucks. I've had it happen to me, twice.
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Which hardware do you want to verify repairability? Everything you mentioned is not something you repair by any other method than replacement.
All the Macs I've seen for a good long while have had ethernet built into the motherboard. At the very least, that motherboard needs to be replaced. If they just stick an nic in a slot I would not call that a proper repair.
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BryanP,
That's the exact model we used. I have one between my own cable modem and router.
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EMP is an electromagnetic pulse that induces current in electrical components.
Lightning is a plain old power surge.
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wireless internet on battery power is a good thing in a thunder storm
A buddy has his whole house on surge/lightning protection
he neglected to protect his Dish antenna
the surge from the hit on the tree it was mounted on, fried a bunch of TV hardware
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I have a G4/350 tower (and Ethernet port is on the motherboard). I got a replacement Ethernet card, not sure how to make the computer recognize it.
The other computer is a G3/500 laptop with a wirelss card. In theory, I could try to connect it to the modem directly, but I can't recall how to convert it to wired networking.
The modem is likely OK, as I replaced it with another of the same exact model, no change in indicator lights or behavior. The router is broadcasting a local network info, so it seems to be at least somewhat functional. My bet is on the Ehternet card in the G4.
Anyone with Mac expertise here?
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is the card an apple compatible card?
yer gonna need drivers
the network system prefences in OS X is yer friend
is the laptop OSX or OS 9.X?
you basically plug the ethernet RJ45 cable in the port and check the settings
OSX dynamically switches to a LAN cable
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My laptop is running 10.3 and desktop is 10.28
I will look into network controls. Where'd I get Mac drivers for a generic E card? (Not much tech support for Macs in this town...)
Don't know if the card is apple-compatible...how would I find out?
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the card may not have mac OS drivers
gotta check the makers website
Asante makes Mac ethernet cards (NICs)
http://asante.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=3758294/
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Not quite the record for thread necromancy.
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But close.
Brad