Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: What went wrong

[Peter Humphrey]

On Tuesday 16 January 2007 21:42, Duncan wrote:

> Back to your situation, however.  It's not electrical spikes from either
> the power or whatever broadband you have killing everything, right?  Your
> story just sounded too familiar.

In this country the power supply system is quite civilised. To illustrate: I 
remember quite a heated discussion involving an American who was adamant 
that no supplier of surge suppressors could possibly offer a replacement 
guarantee on any equipment damaged by spikes when connected to its 
suppressors. Not and stay in business, that is. Over here, though, I have 
such a guarantee certificate in the filing system which relates to the 
surge suppressor I use to supply my installation, and such guarantees are 
common. It undertakes to replace any equipment damaged by a spike, up to a 
value of £20,000. What I'm trying to say is that I can rule out waywardness 
of the public electricity supply. Oh, and the phone line also passes 
through a section of the suppressor and I'm confident that I'm not being 
spiked that way either. And we haven't had lighting hereabouts for quite a 
while anyway. Drizzle, yes, but not lightning.

No, the problems are local. That disk has done some damage, I'm fairly sure 
but with no real evidence, and I probably haven't helped either. Yes, I do 
use an earthing strap (or sometimes I take a short-cut and keep one hand in 
contact with the framework), but somebody suggested the other day that my 
floppy disk drive's signal cable might have been connected the wrong way 
round (what price keys, eh?), so I tried it the other way, thinking that 
the symptoms could fit. That didn't help, so I put it back again and since 
then the Ethernet ports have been dead. Defensive design? What's that?

Sometimes, when nothing works, it's hard to find a way in so as to fix it.

-- 
Rgds
Peter

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