Dial-up Woe (misery)

[Savaric]

I have issues with my dial-up modems in the past. Last night my connection was fine, I shut down because there was a thunder storm. I shut the computer down with programs running, and had to end some annoying aol isp programs before they finished turning off. There was some hang time and the shutdown took longer than normal. Now when I try to log on I get series of pops and clicks from the internal modem, no dial tone, and aol gives an error report that it cannot connect.

Now I got this exact problem a couple months ago (yup - during a thunderstorm). I went to best buy and re-bought the same modem, popped it in with no other changes, and it was back to normal. Any ideas what causes this? My phone line runs through my surge protector, the modem itself (zoom v.92 brand) touts internal lightning protection. Could this be caused by software changes or driver issues? I'm apt to say the modem is physically shot (again) because the new, identical modem solved the problem last time.

I live in a rural area with no high-speed. Not to be a whiner but it is mentally taxing having to deal with dial-up. Eighty-five percent of my free time is computer...

[Rosuav]

Quite probably it is fried. The phone line is copper, and if something a bit upstream of you is struck, it's gonna send a fair few volts into your computer. Fortunately for you (for next time), it's not hard to provide a bit of extra safety; when you shut down your computer during a thunderstorm, go the extra bit of effort and unplug it from the wall everwhere - which probably only means power and phone.

I can't find much on Zoom's web site about their touted lightning protection; only this:

http://www.zoom.com/about/news97_06.html

The FCC test simulates a lightning strike by exposing the test modem to an 800-volt peak amplitude electrical surge, current-limited to 100 amps, over a period of time consisting of 10µs (microseconds) risetime and 560µs decay time to half-voltage peak.

800 volts is a fair whack more than a modem is normally going to expect to come down the phone line, but it falls just a tad short of true lightning. (When Mythbusters have needed to test lightning, they've at times gone for what's probably the biggest man-made spark possible - I think a quarter of a million volts? - but it's still way less than lightning, which is variously estimated at figures up to a billion volts.) It's possible that your lightning strike was more than its protection could withstand.

BTW, I fully understand your dislike of working at modem speed. Whining? Maybe. But whining with good reason.

[Savaric]

It's actually the only logical explanation, a power surge. I didn't unplug anything from the walls/outlets. But the phone line does run through the surge protector. Well the answer is that it doesn't work, lol. Guess I'll buy another one... And unplug at the first rumble of thunder.

The internet is a very important piece of technology today. It goes beyond entertainment value. Example: the grass in my backyard is crap and I wanted to see what I would need to patch it up. Depending on how bad it is, whether you have diseases, pets or high traffic, you can patch up little spots or completely renovate it by killing off all the old grass and replanting the yard. Depending on the time of year you may want to wait until spring or early summer for a complete overhaul. Well I didn't have to get in the car and go to home depot to learn that. All thanks to the internet!

And I try not to complain about dial-up when people don't have electricity... But the internet is designed around high-speed. I cannot view movies for example, or it has to be something worth leaving the computer alone for a while to download. News clips or similar have to wait until I'm at school. As for youtube... I'm aware of its existence.

[Rosuav]

Originally posted by Savaric
It's actually the only logical explanation, a power surge. I didn't unplug anything from the walls/outlets. But the phone line does run through the surge protector. Well the answer is that it doesn't work, lol. Guess I'll buy another one... And unplug at the first rumble of thunder.

And I try not to complain about dial-up when people don't have electricity... But the internet is designed around high-speed.

You're absolutely right on all the above points. It annoys me that so many sites are moving more and more towards high-bandwidth wrappers around the same content they always had... dilbert.com particularly, in recent times. (Well, they HAVE added more content, but the same old content (namely, simple static images of cartoons) is now wrapped up in heavyweight guff.)

I wouldn't necessarily say your surge protector *doesn't work*. As I mentioned above, lightning strikes pump millions and millions of volts into you... but your ordinary unfiltered incoming line could have spikes too, and your protector will probably stop them getting through. (Although the lightning strike may have hurt it, too. Hard to know.)

For all your power needs, I strongly recommend a full UPS. Not only will you get full power conditioning, but you also get blackout protection. As you're not an Aussie, I doubt you'd buy from Upsonic (as we do), but their web site has a quick run-down on what sorts of problems your incoming power can have, and what they can do to your system. http://www.upsonic.com.au/powerprob.asp The BOFH has plenty to say about UPSes, too.... in his own inimitable way. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02...008_episode_5/

[Savaric]

So it's not good to unplug your computer while it's on? I've done it in the past...

Those UPS are just basically a surge protector with built-in power supply? How long can they run your computer during a blackout? I can only see their advantage during blackout/brownout. And maybe that I can keep playing a game during a power failure :P

[Rosuav]

Originally posted by Savaric
So it's not good to unplug your computer while it's on? I've done it in the past...

Those UPS are just basically a surge protector with built-in power supply? How long can they run your computer during a blackout? I can only see their advantage during blackout/brownout. And maybe that I can keep playing a game during a power failure :P

As in, brutally cut power to a running computer? It's definitely not good... but that said, it's a lot less bad than it used to be. I don't recommend it as your standard means of powering down at the end of the night, but there are times when you need to abruptly cut off all power. (Most of the time, though, holding your power switch for 5 seconds is enough of a forced-power-off.)

UPSes vary enormously in what they offer; most of them offer power conditioning and battery backup. During a blackout, they'll run your systems for as long as the batteries hold out - you'd have to look at the specs for the UPS and the total draw of your system to figure out exactly how long that is. Any half-decent UPS will give you 10-15 minutes, which is usually enough to finish up, save, and shut down; but industrial-grade systems may need more than that. On the other hand, some really major server farms have diesel generators, so the UPS doesn't have to power the system for long (if the gen set takes, say, 20 seconds to get to full power, then the UPS only needs to be able to cover those 20 seconds), so be sure to check what you're getting.

Alternatively, just get some stats together about what you need, and then put a salesman to work. That's what they're employed for.