During a horrible thunderstorm two weeks ago, I thought I lost a lot of equipment but it turned out that I lost the USB and firewire ports on a lot of equipment. I could not figure out how these ports would be destroyed while the remainder of the associated devices (computer, 5000a, printer, etc.) could work, no surge protectors were tripped, no power supplies fried, etc. For instance, on one computer, I had usb cables in 3 of the 4 USB ports and all three no longer work but the fourth one (as well as all of the other parts of the computer) is fine. My Flex's firewire port that I used to connect to the computer was fried but the one immediately next to it works fine. My laser printer's usb port is dead but I am able to use it 100% with the LAN connection.
It turns out that the surge protectors in the UPS, power strips, etc. are the culprit in burning out the ports. Jim, K9YC (the guy who wrote the Pin 1 RFI paper that is so often referenced) clued me into this link: http://www.surgex.com/library/23001.html Turns out that unless you are using the big honkin' whole-house MOV surge protectors, they are more dangerous than nothing in protecting your computer stuff. I just bought one of the Surgex protectors. According to Jim, you should plug in the Surgex into power outlet, then your UPS into the Surgex, then any surge protected power strips after the UPS. Also, anything connected to the USB/Firewire cable has to be protected in this way, it does no good if only the device on one end of the cable is protected with the Surgex and the other is not. 73 -- Neal Campbell Abroham Neal Software Programming Services for Windows, OS X and Linux (540) 242 0911 --------------------------------------------------------------------- Try Spot for OS X, the intelligent DXCluster Client at www.abrohamnealsoftware.com - introduction priced at $10.99 For a great dog book, visit www.abrohamneal.com _______________________________________________ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
