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
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