upstatemike
Senior Member
I always thought I was pretty well protected from lightning and surges. I have surge protecters on everything. I even have Brick Wall series mode surge protectors ahead of the UPS's on my PCs for double protection. Unfortunately that wasn't enough for the storm that roared though here the other night.
We had several close lightning strikes (one of them set a nearby house on fire) and a lot of power flickering but I thought I was OK because of all the protective equipment. After it was all over I took an inventory and found I had lost an RS-485 hub, the serial ports on 2 PCs, and the serial interfaces on my phone system and my Stargate. This surprised me because none of my serial cabling connects to "unprotected" equipment and I had never had failures like this before.
I don't know if the issue relates to each end of the serial cable connecting to equipment with slightly different ground points or different AC legs or what but I need to figure it out before the next storm does some serious damage.
Anybody using surge protection on their in-house serial lines and if so, what do you use? Do I need to switch to opto-isolated serial cards in my PC (at $200 a pop), or put surge protection at each end of each serial cable? Any input would be appreciated.
We had several close lightning strikes (one of them set a nearby house on fire) and a lot of power flickering but I thought I was OK because of all the protective equipment. After it was all over I took an inventory and found I had lost an RS-485 hub, the serial ports on 2 PCs, and the serial interfaces on my phone system and my Stargate. This surprised me because none of my serial cabling connects to "unprotected" equipment and I had never had failures like this before.
I don't know if the issue relates to each end of the serial cable connecting to equipment with slightly different ground points or different AC legs or what but I need to figure it out before the next storm does some serious damage.
Anybody using surge protection on their in-house serial lines and if so, what do you use? Do I need to switch to opto-isolated serial cards in my PC (at $200 a pop), or put surge protection at each end of each serial cable? Any input would be appreciated.