On Jul 14, 22:34, Jeff Hellige wrote:
> >Yes. The control board in my Dad's garage door opener was killed by a
close
> >lightning strike. My sister, who owns the house next door to him, lost
the
> >motherboard on her PC -- and it wasn't on at the time, just plugged in.
>
> I've seen ISA based internal modems that took surges from
> strikes on the line. Some of them looked like they caught fire or at
> least got very hot.
They probably weren't strikes on the line, just spikes induced by
near-misses. Phone lines, especially overhead lines, are like big antennae
during a thunderstorm. If you ever watch phone engineers working on
multicore cables when the skies darken during thunder season, you'll see
them getting away from the cable ends fast -- the induced spikes can be
quite spectacular.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
Received on Sun Jul 15 2001 - 05:57:55 BST