On Fri, Aug 19, 2005 at 08:49:04AM +1000, Amos Shapira wrote: > I dunno where you live but many old in Tel-Aviv and surroundings > don't have grounding at all (I first found this out from getting > "electrocuted" from the D-frame of the serial port).
Shocks like this often come from no grounding when you have an MOV type "surge supressor". These are the ones that are sold in computer and office supply stores and are IMHO worthless junk. The good ones are manufactured by a company called TripLite which sells them under the brand ISOBAR or if you really have money a commercial one called Trans-Tec. Both are made in the U.S. and are therefore hard to find if at all and expensive here. Many devices use them internaly too. The problem is that they "leak". A new MOV leaks about 80 volts, enough to give you a good shock. As they absorb shocks, they leak more until eventualy they fail, sometimes with a flash and smoke. You may also find that if you have relativley new wiring (done in the last 50 years) the ground wire runs to your outlet but is not connected or the ground pin has lost its flexability and no longer makes contact. Since we have moved into this (rental) apartment nine years ago we have had to replace every outlet at least once because the previous tenant used electric heaters all winter and literaly burnt the outlets. Some of the outlets have been replaced two or three times as the cheap replacement ones don't make good contact (and the ground pins are the worst). You should also make sure that the cable company has grounded their cable where it comes into the building. If that gound is bad or missing, you will have problems. Personaly, I would borrow a different computer that runs windows and let it run for a few days to see if you still have problems. Then if it does not work, you can complain and they may actually support you. Another usefull thing to do is to get a different network card. Intel cards work flawlessly, Other brands may not, especialy RealTec chipset ones. Geoff. -- Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel [EMAIL PROTECTED] N3OWJ/4X1GM IL Voice: (077)-424-1667 IL Fax: 972-2-648-1443 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838 Support the growing boycott of Google by radio users and hobbyists. It's starting to work, Yahoo has surpassed Google. ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
