Author Topic: Lightning strike  (Read 3100 times)

Offline naffsharpe (Nathan)

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Lightning strike
« on: November 30, 2018, 05:52:21 PM »
Evening all, yesterday at about 3 pm we heard a very loud crack followed by an even louder rumble of thunder. The strike was probably in the garden . The end result was , one router/modem, one ethernet cable, one ethernet PCI card and one motherboard dead ! Thankfully all 3 HDD's have survived as have all phones . The PC still allows me to read my HDD's but has no comms and shuts down after about 1/4 hour. It's not economically viable to repair . I'm thinking about replacing it with a refurbished Dell Opticron 789/790 SFF from Morgan Computers (UK) . This comes preloaded with Win 10 64 bit , is upgradeable from 4gb to 16gb memory and I can increase HDD size by fitting a larger drive. Can anyone see any drawbacks or potential problems? I can use my 2 external HDD's with no work, I should be able to copy from my internal drive to the Dell HDD. Am I missing something? Nathan.

Offline naffsharpe (Nathan)

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Re: Lightning strike
« Reply #1 on: November 30, 2018, 06:00:40 PM »
In answer to the inevitable question , I'm working from a Viglen 10" tablet through our spare router/modem and via wifi, which is doing my eyesight no good !! Nathan

Offline mc

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Re: Lightning strike
« Reply #2 on: November 30, 2018, 06:29:17 PM »
If you're not worried about performance, refurbs are as good as anything. Dells are generally no frills, and pretty reliable.

I've never heard of Morgan Computers, but then when I want a secondhand computer, I just search eBay for something that ticks all the boxes I happen to be looking for, as there are plenty sellers offering refurbs.
Only comment I would add, is if going for Windows 10, try and get professional. It gives you that little bit more control over things.

Offline naffsharpe (Nathan)

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Re: Lightning strike
« Reply #3 on: November 30, 2018, 06:44:06 PM »
Thanks' for that  mc . Yes it comes with W 10 Pro 64 bit pre - installed. It should do what I need. Nathan.

Offline awemawson

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Re: Lightning strike
« Reply #4 on: December 01, 2018, 03:20:55 AM »
I've had stuff from Morgan's over very many years and not had any problems. IIRC they moved a few years back. They originally were at the bottom of Tottenham Court Road by the junction with Oxford Street.

I'm running some Dell Optiplex SFF units that came refurbished and pre-loaded that have performed faultlessly so far. One runs my CNC plasma table and the other is dedicated to my Cetus 3D printer

The only possible downside, but it doesn't affect my applications, is that being 'ex corporate ' they aren't equipped with internal speakers.
Andrew Mawson
East Sussex

Offline naffsharpe (Nathan)

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Re: Lightning strike
« Reply #5 on: December 01, 2018, 06:07:48 AM »
Andrew, I've also bought from them previously and had no problems . They no longer have any stores but are now totally online. The OptiPlex has on board sound so I'll just plug my existing 2 . 1 setup in. If the onboard sounds are not good I'll find a low profile PCI card on Ebay.  Nathan.

Offline Pete W.

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Re: Lightning strike
« Reply #6 on: December 01, 2018, 11:00:00 AM »
I bought a couple of items from Morgan Computers back in the 1980's.  That was from their New Oxford Street store.

One was a Brother daisy wheel printer.  A brilliant bit of kit!  The thing was, you got just what the advert said - the sales guy plugged in the power cord to test the printer but unplugged it again when the printer had been shown to be OK and returned the power cord to some place under the counter!  And it came with just the ribbon that was fitted.  Still, I went back later and bought the tractor feed attachment.  With the right label stock it would print all the sticky address labels for my Christmas cards completely unattended.

My second major purchase from Morgan was a Hewlett Packard digital X-Y plotter.  I was living in Essex in those days and the plotter was a bit of an armfull to manage on the Underground back to Liverpool Station!!!!!!

Please don't leave us hanging, Nathan, do come back and post what you decided and how things worked out.   
Best regards,

Pete W.

If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, you haven't seen the latest design change-note!

Offline naffsharpe (Nathan)

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Re: Lightning strike
« Reply #7 on: December 01, 2018, 02:37:09 PM »
Pete, I went ahead and placed my order this afternoon. I should have a PC up and running by midweek . I decided to stick with my first choice, a  Dell Optiplex 780 SFF PC C2D E8400 3GHz 4GB 160GB DVD Windows 10 Professional (Refurbished / Grade A1) @ £108.29 . Not a bad price even if I have to play with it a bit. I think I've some DDR3 here somewhere to bring it up to 16GB and I'll clone/copy to a larger HDD . Now I'll start looking for something to fill the empty slots, 1 x PCI and 1 x PCI x 16 , both low profile . While I'm in "spend" mode I've also decided to bring my old Dell Precision M 70 back into use as workshop laptop, under XP it will do most of what I need. The other thing that I realised is just how much space I gain under my desk, the Optiplex is SFF, about 1/3 of a ft/3 ! I'm looking forward to receiving it and getting off this tablet which is too small for my clumsy fingers !! Nathan.

Offline naffsharpe (Nathan)

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Re: Lightning strike
« Reply #8 on: December 01, 2018, 02:59:36 PM »
On a related subject, protection from the effects of lightning strike , I had some feed back from the ME Forum where I'm also a member. While I realise that , unless you unplug your kit , you can never be fully protected but you can buy plug in phone line surge arrestors . I had never heard of them before . One ME member has offered me some RS units he had found while sorting his workshop , the generosity of people within our hobby is outstanding. Nathan.

Offline naffsharpe (Nathan)

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Re: Lightning strike
« Reply #9 on: December 07, 2018, 07:08:39 PM »
Hello all, today I had a few hours to look at the "lightning strike" PC. After the week of despair I decided to actually look at the motherboard to see what had happened to it , something I had decided many years ago, never to do again!! After much head scratching I started to delve and have managed to bring it back to life (of a kind), but well enough to be posting this slowly and with many re-paging episodes. I had lost audio, pci/motherboard ethernet and all Usb bus. There were 2 spare pci slots which are filled with an ancient Creative soundcard and an equally ancient ethernet card, usb was solved by using the second channel usb which was marked as front panel and never worked! I've lost 4.5Gb of memory (I'd done the software mod to allow 32 bit to see 8 Gb ) but all appears to be working O/K . I had to use solder kit twice only. All of this was forced by Morgan Computers doing what they sat they do , provide the customer with what the customer requires, the PC I ordered was not actually in stock so they upgraded my choice to the desktop model  but they had to have it upgraded to Win  10 before they sent to me . My next problem is finding affordable DDR3 non ecc at 1333mhz al I have is DDR2 at 850mhz . Nathan.

Offline hermetic

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Re: Lightning strike
« Reply #10 on: December 08, 2018, 06:31:58 AM »
I have been building and repairing computers for a looong time, although I don't do it commercially any more. One of the things we used to often see in lightning damaged modem cards, was a tiny pinhole in one or more of the chips where they had literally blown out. From the electrical point of view, voltage surge can be induced into nearby power and telephone lines, especially overhead lines, without a direct strike, and all methods of surge protection only work some of the time! Having your computer equipment plugged into a good quality surge protected power bank will help, and cetainly the adsl routers do not seem to be as sensitive, or at least are better protected (maybe) from phone line surges. Our shop used to fill up with "no internet" computers after every thunder storm.
Phil
Man who says it cannot be done should not disturb man doing it! https://www.youtube.com/user/philhermetic/videos?

Offline naffsharpe (Nathan)

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Re: Lightning strike
« Reply #11 on: December 11, 2018, 05:32:39 PM »
Hello to all, today I took delivery of the Dell OptiPlex . It looks o/k on unboxing but I've yet to run it into a monitor . I have no doubt or worries about it's abilities but would like some help with upgrading it's memory from 4Gb to 16Gb. I've never worked on a Dell PC before and have had my previous Dell laptop upgraded by a third party . This machine has 4 memory slots, each has one white and one black tagged slot, so operating in pairs . The current memory has one 2Gb stick in each of the white tagged slots . If I buy 4 Gb sticks do they need to be matched pairs and do I fit them as currently fitted memory ie , one of each matched pair into "White" and each of the other matched pair into "Black" or do I not need to worry about matched pairs ? Nathan.

Offline russ57

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Re: Lightning strike
« Reply #12 on: December 12, 2018, 04:39:04 AM »
I'd be fairly happy not to worry about matched pairs.



Russ


Offline naffsharpe (Nathan)

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Re: Lightning strike
« Reply #13 on: December 15, 2018, 05:12:18 PM »
Hello all, from a very windy and wet North Wales ! Today has not been an" outside" day so I finally got to grips with this replacement PC. It obviously works as I'm posting this from it and I have to say I'm very pleased with it. For the first time in many years I have an uncluttered computer ! I've resisted (so far) putting too much on it but I'm sure that will change. Memory has been brought up to 16Gb to make the most of a 64bit O/S . As Russ suggested , matching of modules was not required although I did fit 4 x 4 Gb from the same manufacturer. I pulled out 2 x 2Gb from differing manufacturers , 1 Samsung and 1 HP , so were do Dell PC's gain a reputation for being "fussy" about  RAM ? Anyway it's working well and I'm happy . To aid with future protection against lightning strikes I'm looking at "blitzortung.org" on a regular basis, surge protection has been added to the phone socket (thanks to a fellow forum member on Model Engineer ) and we are in the habit of unplugging at night, so hopefully kit will last longer. I'm very happy to tout Morgan Computers to any UK member. As they had accepted my order for a win 10  64 bit machine before realising they'd run out , they , at their cost had a win 7 64 bit upgraded for me. I gain a larger HDD and a newer machine as checked using Dell's service tag and for the same price , their memory was a bit pricy so I ordered that from elsewhere. My next job is to find a decent low latency external sound card and a slimline PCI soundcard. If I have those in stock then I've covered my options for audio should I lose onboard sound and I'll still have the option of fitting a PCI ethernet card. All in all I'm a happy bunny tonight . I'm staying indoors tonight incase any bunny hunters are around!! Nathan.