Thunderstorm killed my modem (exploded)...

Well, title says it all. A storm yesterday produced a spike or something that made my conexant winmodem explode !!!... well, it was not THAT loud, but a clear BANG coming from within the computer, and then it was OFF (computer powered off by itself). Man, thought I had killed the whole computer.... just 2 minutes later powered it on again, and was working perfectly... except the modem, which was giving no dial tone.

So, this afternoon I bought this Zoom V.92 external modem with surge protection... hope it will last longer and not being a winmodem, I can use it also within Linux and OS/2 Warp....

In any case, guys, watch out in thunderstorms. I was extremely lucky... it could perfectly have killed all my equipment.

Regards
FTC

Modems make great surge protectors, yes. Back when we just had "the family computer" (gag), a lightning strike made the Motorola modem melt right in the PCI slot it sat in. I yanked it out, it never worked again, but the rest of the machine was fine.

Now PICTURES! I want pictures.

Most of the newer surge protectors include a phone line surge protection or you can simply buy one for the box outside your house.

That happened to me 4th of July weekend back in 2000. I thought
I go look at one more web page and POW!!! It took the Motorola
modem out and the PC. Chips in the model actually blew off
the circuit board and sparks flew across the room.

I took this as Nature's way of telling me it was time for an upgrade!!

hehe i know how to kill a modem without a lightining storm (although a friend of mone had his modem blow in a storm and it actually melted the phone wire in the whole house and blew a good 1" rad. of the PCB around the RJ-11 jack clean off the modem. i guess a direct hit to the phone will do that, at any rate that one fried the mobo too.) look here scroll down to the "RJ-11 killer"

Now PICTURES! I want pictures.

Click to expand...

Theperfect.... I was very deceived when removing the dead modem... No signs of the explosion or something. Just a little smell, so I prefer not to post pictures.... (I'll make sure to use a 'professional' killer like Tbird's suggested next time )

Regards
FTC

I had a lightning strike take out a phone cord, the modem surge protector, the DSL "modem", and the DSLAM at the switch house. Sucked though cause I lost my DSL for over a month and had to fight alittle to get a new DSL "modem" shipped. But I got a free month and network card out of it.

Working in tech support, we see this all the time where a modem has been hit and a big hole has been blown out of the center of the chip. It's pretty common. It's also common for it to take out the motherboard and other PCI cards when it's hit that hard too. So you guys who didn't lose anything else are lucky.

The best defense is layered surge protection. You can get a whole house surge protector that connects to your power panel. Then a surge protector between the power outlet and the computer along with a surge protector for the phone line. I have cable and I have a grounding switch between the cable and the rest of the house. I throw the switch when there is a lightning storm.

When lightening hit my apartment two years ago it took out my 3COM Gaming Modem. The computer was on at the time and it shut down. The computer would not restart with the modem in it. After I finally figured out what happened I took out the modem and there was a deep "chip" on one of the chips. It had pushed alot of the plastic off of the chip and there was burn marks on it too.