[SECC] KS4Q Cluster Outage

[Ernie Zingleman]

Guys,

Last night while I was out to see fireworks with the family there were evidently some fireworks here at the house!

About 8:50 PM last night a surge came in the house from the VHF cluster radio/TNC and made its way to the cluster PC.  Either that or a strike came in on the AC mains and sought out the superior ground system that I use on the ham station...via the serial cable from the computer to the TNC/2 meter rig.

The result was a very well cooked serial port PCI board in the cluster computer and an 'iffy' motherboard.  I replaced the motherboard as a precaution as these things just like our rigs can be weakened by lighting only to fail a few days or weeks later.

All the other electronics in the house appears to be just fine....but time will tell!

Fortunately I was able to find an exact replacement for the motherboard which relieved me of having to re-install windows 2000 server on the PC.

The cluster seems to be working normally...but let me know if you see something that I missed.

If you want to recieve perodic updates from me on the cluster, send an email with the subject "subscribe" to ks4q-cluster at zingleman.com


73, Ernie KS4Q