I woke up from a sound dead sleep at about 4:30am Thursday night to find that a fast-moving and very violent thunderstorm cell had arrived and was almost right overhead. It took me several minutes to come to and figure out what was going on (I think I was deep in REM sleep when awoken...) In my groggy state something occured to me... that all my electronics gear (incl. both PCs) was all still plugged in. By this time the rain was pounding on the roof and lightning was flashing all around the house. I sat on the edge of the bed for a few seconds trying to decide if it were wiser to run around disconnecting everything but taking the chance that if something did hit I just might have my hand on a plug or the cable co-ax, or riding it out and hoping for the best and not risk life and limb for consumer electronics.
Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, for if I had waken up a few seconds faster I would have been trying to disconnect everything for sure by then...) Mother Nature chose that moment to make my mind up for me... Every window flashed with a simultaneous boom and the house filled with the strong scent of ozone and smoking circuitry... "Well... I guess that settles that, then..." I thought, as I got up to survey the wreckage.
The lights were all on and none of the clocks were blinking, so I took that as as good sign that it wasn't a power-mains surge. The living-room cable box was the source of the smoking smell... it was trashed, but the TV and the surround system seemed fine. So it seemed like the strike occured only over the cable line. At first this seemed like good news,.. until my sleep addled brain chose to remember that both PC were also tied to that same cable line...
My Linksys router was dead... so are my beloved Altec-Lansing ADA 885 speakers (well, they still kinda work,.. but itermittently. I have to see if Dell or Altec will still repair them. They've been out of production for several years.) It's very possible my soundcard is toast too. My cable modem seemed to work, but the speed had generally dropped to a sub dial-up rate,.. although I hadn't totally ruled out that might have been the network card. Not fun at all.
The other PC (the Dell Optiplex in the cellar) seems to come out unscathed, except for the fact that without the router I couldn't get any interweb connection on it.

Today I got to go shopping! The first purchase I made were a bunch of new surge-supressor power strips, with co-ax and ethernet ins and outs. The old ones I have help with AC surges, but didn't cover me for anything over the cable lines or network. Hope these help.
Also: a new router and a new network card (just to be sure,.. they're cheap enough,) and now things seem back to normal. I guess the cable modem is OK... although it seems strange that it would have survived.

Now I have to decide on speakers... *sigh*. I really loved the sound of these,.. and I haven't really been all that impressed with any of the other PC surround systems I've heard... but I have to plan on the fact that they might not be able to be fixed.
A couple of people have told me that the Creative Megaworks THX 6.1 (pricey!) and Logitech z-680 (not quite as expensive, but also not quite as good) systems are nice. I want one that's THX, ProLogic, Dolby Digital, DTS (if available) and it has to have a digital input. The Klipsh systems also seem nice, but are a little out of my range, and Altec doesn't make a full system with all the things I want on it anymore.
I'm going to play around tonight and tomorrow with the speaker systems and soundcards on each computer. I don't really want to replace the soundcard in my #1 if I don't have to... it's a fairly new Audigy 2Z. I really want to make sure it has a problem before I rip it out.
I did pick up a fairly cheap Turtle Beach card while I was out today... but I might return it if the SoundBlaster is OK... I say "might" because now I'm thinking that if the Audigy is OK that it will go in the new PC when built, and the Turtle Beach will stay in this one. Not 24 bit though... :(

If anyone has any suggestions or experience with any of these replacements, please let me know! I'm leaning toward the Creatives... although I also know I really don't want to pay that much...
I'm more than a little bummed out about this... I know I'm very lucky to not have had my hand on the power or cable lead at that time, and overall the damage could have been much, much worse... but I was also planning on upgrading my PC hardware soon, but carrying the speakers and such over to the new comp in order to keep the costs down. Oh well...

Last August, my house was struck by lightning. Killed my xbox, 20" flat screen TV, router, the network cards in all our computers, and a dvd player. Quite annoying. I got a new xbox and later repaired the old one (but it seems to have died again) and the other day I managed to fix my old dead TV. Now I have two (one working) xboxes and two 20" flatscreen TVs. Its like I'm rich or something.

I was probably less than six feet from where the lightning hit my house. It made the hair on my legs stand up a second before it happened.

It's happened to me before, too. The last time happened on the day I was moving out of another house. The only thing left in the house plugged in was a TV and a cable box. I had just turned off the TV and was starting out to the truck with it when the windows lit up with an ear-splitting crack, and a shower of sparks and smoke out of the cable box.
We had to drop the box off at the cable co. on the way out of town. They weren't amused. The box was visably damaged and smelled like an ashtray. They gave us suspicious looks as we dropped it off. "No, really! Lightning hit the house just as we were about to disconnect it to come over here to drop it off!!! Honestly..."

I have to look into my homeowners insurance to see if it covers any of this. 'Specially the speakers... :D

Update: The soundcard appears OK. Now I just have to determine if I really want to return the Turtle Beach... it was cheap enough. I was having a couple of issues with the Audigy in this PC. Maybe the other card will be a better fit. Hmmm....

Sorry edlib, that sucks. Mine was hit by lighting a few months ago too, and I lost some stuff.

looks like you just got a reason to buy better, newer stuff. ;)

well.. and might be you should get a martini for still being alive.. hey.. and doesnt this story somehow belongs in Nute's thread? :p

anyways. i hate it too if (good) hardware dies.

Yes... Mother Nature can be a bitch, can't she? ;)

But you are right... it is better to still be alive! Possessions, no matter how attached I become to them, can always be repaired or replaced.

If the Guitars and related gear aren't harmed then there's nothing to complain about because that's the only thing that matters.

;)

Originally posted by edlib
Yes... Mother Nature can be a bitch, can't she? ;)


oh yes she can, but mostly there is a positive side on it. once i got punched by a police officer for no reason and it ruined three years of orthodontic treatment.
now all i have to do is wait until my teeth are completely rotten and he will pay my dentist bill for a brand new set of teeth. he also lost his job and payed my wide screen tv set. :D

ok.. if i could chose i rather would like to keep my corrected teeth. all i need to do is not wearing a white basecap.
..

on the computer issue i can say everytime i really, really needed it, the harddisk loses it's partition information, the power supply burns out, the memory modules go downhill, windows says something like "blah.dll not found, please reinstall" or "a registry error occured" or the videocard exits..
my pc hardly was ever closed, because i used to do a lot of err.. experiments, but i never anything happened during or because ot those. all that happened always for no apparent reason.
now the fact that my noteboook still works (since a year), that i did not used a computer for 3 years (at home) and that my pII is still working shows i did not really needed a computer for years. at home.
i have to reinstall my machine at work every 6-7 month. but sometimes because i "have to" use new hardware because someone needs the old. :rolleyes:

yes, mother nature's a bitch and my life is doing her pretty well.. ;)

(ok, but i never got soooo close to the final fart like you, or at least i am not aware of it :p)

:D

I know this sounds like I'm a sissy and all, but my house has never been struck by lighting. But some months ago my network card gave up on my right out of the blue, so I think I'll blame Mother Nature for this too. :)

Glad to hear you're all right and handling it. And Ray, I believe a near-death experience calls for scotch. Martinis are a "suavetude and luxury" drink; scotch is the generally-accepted "whew!" drink.

Originally posted by edlib
My Linksys router was dead... so are my beloved Altec-Lansing ADA 885 speakers (well, they still kinda work,.. but itermittently. I have to see if Dell or Altec will still repair them. They've been out of production for several years.) :whacked:

Sincere condolences. It sucks when "state of the art" becomes "lost art," doesn't it?

The first purchase I made were a bunch of new surge-supressor power strips, with co-ax and ethernet ins and outs. The old ones I have help with AC surges, but didn't cover me for anything over the cable lines or network. And the grand tradition of "locking the garage door after the car has bolted" continues. ;)

You know it. ;)

Actually, I was using some AC surge-protector power strips,.. but they were old technology (I can't remember buying one in the last 10 years or so,) but otherwise I think the damage probably would have been much worse if I hadn't.
I picked these up in BJ's, and they have AC, phone, ethernet, and cable surge protection built in to the power strip. So far the only issue I've come across is that when I put the cable line through the surge unit, I lose access to some of the higher channels of my digital cable. I'm not sure if this is in the box itself, or the result of using the cheap co-ax cables that came with the units that are most likely bandwidth-limiting the lines. I'll have to get to Radio Shack tomorrow and buy a really good 3-foot co-ax patch cord and do some experimenting. I tend to think that's it, since the cable box in the basement den doesn't have the same issue, but I got it hooked up the same way as the others, only not using the included cable.

Poor Mother nature :( She get's blamed for so much.

Bah!

Storms are a Nazi plot to annoy the hell out of everyone who won WW2!!

This is why I run everything on my network through an active UPS, with supressors *everywhere*. My house got tagged by lightning last year... We lost four TV's, a couple of stereos, every lightbulb in the house, and my parents lost everything in their computer 'cause they wouldn't chip in on the UPS, so the only protection they had was from the network...

Their surge supressor looked like a melted chocolate bar, and the PSU actually caught on fire, and melted parts of the mobo.

My computers were fine (running through an active UPS, they aren't directly connected to the external grid), and my parents learned a valuable lesson: Giving your son $75 to help pay for a UPS is better then losing a brand new $2500 PC.

VICTORY IS MINE! </stewie>