Testing for Lightning damage and power surge damage to compu

F

ForensicOke

Guest
BlankIs there anybody out there that can provide me with some advice in this regard.

We test electronic equipment for the insurance industry of new claimants that have institute a claim regarding "Lightning damage/ power surge damage" to computers and computer equipment.

Regards
 
Perhaps you should ask various insurance carriers what their criteria is
for determining lightning damage/power surge.

Lightning damage in and of itself should be pretty self evident: the
meltdown/blown apart of components in the power supply, that often
extend to other functional areas of the device. Power surges and low
intensity lightning damage are harder to determine. As far as I know,
you gather evidence to the kind of failures that would be cause by a
power surge or brown out (surge: many failed components in one area,
i.e. PS), which is somewhat particular to the type of device being
investigated.

Sorry I cant be more specific.
John


ForensicOke wrote:
Is there anybody out there that can provide me with some advice in this
regard.

We test electronic equipment for the insurance industry of new claimants
that have institute a claim regarding "Lightning damage/ power surge
damage" to computers and computer equipment.

Regards
Click to expand...
 
Blank
"ForensicOke" <myforensic@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:bnbf6e$m6h$1@ctb-nnrp2.saix.net...
Is there anybody out there that can provide me with some advice in this
regard.

We test electronic equipment for the insurance industry of new claimants
that have institute a claim regarding "Lightning damage/ power surge damage"
to computers and computer equipment.

Regards

And the question is ???????????????????
 
BlankOn news groups, please do not post in HTML. Please do not send any
attachments, or backgrounds.

This is a difficult question. Depending on how well the lightning or the
severity of the power surge was, will determine if the damage is visible or
not. A general failure can also look the same depending on how the device
failed.

You really have to take more care to evaluate of the customer is being
truthful or not. If you look at the weather reports for the day, and you
have a client come in with something that is not working, it is very easy to
correlate the events. As for a power serge or brownout, maybe the
electrical company may have logs to this effect. But, then again, under
many circumstances they may have not known themselves if there was a rapid
serge.

I had a modem and TV that was damaged by lightning. There were no visible
means to determine this. The TV, I was able to service, but the modem had
to be scrapped.

Today, we are supposed to be experiencing a geomagnetic storm from the sun.
We are in Canada, and are told that in our geographic location we may be
most susceptible from this. There are many companies that let their
employees go home early, and they did a complete shutdown in order to not
take any chances. I am still working on, because we cannot afford to close
for the day. We have to give our contracts full service at any time.

--

Greetings,

Jerry Greenberg GLG Technologies GLG
=========================================
WebPage http://www.zoom-one.com
Electronics http://www.zoom-one.com/electron.htm
=========================================


"ForensicOke" <myforensic@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:bnbf6e$m6h$1@ctb-nnrp2.saix.net...
Is there anybody out there that can provide me with some advice in this
regard.

We test electronic equipment for the insurance industry of new claimants
that have institute a claim regarding "Lightning damage/ power surge damage"
to computers and computer equipment.

Regards
 
"ForensicOke" <myforensic@hotmail.com> wrote:

BlankIs there anybody out there that can provide me with some advice in this regard.

We test electronic equipment for the insurance industry of new claimants that have institute a claim regarding "Lightning damage/ power surge damage" to computers and computer equipment.

Regards
Click to expand...
That could be very dependent on the way the equipment is used.

Big damage is easy to see; but some damage can only be verified by testing

Some years ago, I worked for a major telecom that used a serial network
(DataKit) for their PC/printer/UNIX networking. The headquarters building was
struck by lightning and we found LOTS of dead serial ports over the next few
days.

No visible motherboard damage on most of the PC's that were on floors other than
the one where the lightning hit, just sufficient electrical damage to make the
serial ports non-functional. Since the serial port was on the motherboard, the
motherboard had to be replaced on every problem computer.


More about me: http://www.jecarter.com/
VB3/VB6/NSBasic Palm/C/PowerBasic source code: http://www.jecarter.com/programs.html
Drivers for Pablo graphics tablet and JamCam cameras: http://home.earthlink.net/~mwbt/
johnecarter at@at mindspring dot.dot com. Fix the obvious to reply by email.
 
My apologies to Baphomet. I'm a newbie and is still learning along the way.

Thanks for all the answers and advice. My collogues were right, I should
have joined this newsgroup long ago!

Furthermore, I would like to know if there is a way to differentiate between
a power surge not caused by lightning and a spike caused by lightning by
testing the components on the motherboard?

I know that there is a difference in change over time between a normal power
surge and surge caused by lightning (transient much faster in nanosecond)
and was wondering if that perhaps can in some way give an indication on the
components which of the two it is. We have tried signal tracking but that
can only give an indication of a good, bad, or marginal components on the
mobo and does not help very much.

Normally we check for lightning activity via the Weather Service in the area
stipulated by the claimant as place of loss, but remember we are in South
Africa! The Weather Service here only keep record of lightning activity and
can not differentiate between whether it was cloud-to-cloud activity or
cloud-to-ground activity. Damage via lightning (we have discussed this with
various lightning experts in the US) can only take place when it is a
cloud-to-ground strike and thus we are back to square 1.

Regards
ForensicOke

"Baphomet" <fandaDEATH2SPAMMERS@catskill.net> wrote in message
news:vpijls3lrbvi63@corp.supernews.com...
Blank
"ForensicOke" <myforensic@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:bnbf6e$m6h$1@ctb-nnrp2.saix.net...
Is there anybody out there that can provide me with some advice in this
regard.

We test electronic equipment for the insurance industry of new claimants
that have institute a claim regarding "Lightning damage/ power surge
damage"
to computers and computer equipment.

Regards

And the question is ???????????????????
Click to expand...
 
On Fri, 24 Oct 2003 17:04:36 +0200, ForensicOke wrote:

Is there anybody out there that can provide me with some advice
Click to expand...
Yes, don't post in HTML. You're more likely to get responses.

--
Then there's duct tape ...
(Garrison Keillor)
nofr@sbhevre.pbzchyvax.pb.hx
 
"ForensicOke" <myforensic@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:bnda07$2bp$1@ctb-nnrp2.saix.net...
My apologies to Baphomet. I'm a newbie and is still learning along the
way.

Thanks for all the answers and advice. My collogues were right, I should
have joined this newsgroup long ago!

Furthermore, I would like to know if there is a way to differentiate
between
a power surge not caused by lightning and a spike caused by lightning by
testing the components on the motherboard?

I know that there is a difference in change over time between a normal
power
surge and surge caused by lightning (transient much faster in nanosecond)
and was wondering if that perhaps can in some way give an indication on
the
components which of the two it is. We have tried signal tracking but that
can only give an indication of a good, bad, or marginal components on the
mobo and does not help very much.

Normally we check for lightning activity via the Weather Service in the
area
stipulated by the claimant as place of loss, but remember we are in South
Africa! The Weather Service here only keep record of lightning activity
and
can not differentiate between whether it was cloud-to-cloud activity or
cloud-to-ground activity. Damage via lightning (we have discussed this
with
various lightning experts in the US) can only take place when it is a
cloud-to-ground strike and thus we are back to square 1.

Regards
ForensicOke
Click to expand...
Most of the damage (although not necessarily all) will be incurred at the
front end (the power supply primarily) of the circuit board. A near direct
lightning hit will result in fuses or fusible resistors blowing, rectifiers
(often only one or two in a bridge rectifier) shorting etc. There is often
burning of the p.c. board which can result in open lands (the p.c.
equivalent of wires) and power transformers (especially the cheaper kind
with a built in fuse) failing.

A hefty power surge will also result result in similar problems, absent
perhaps p.c. burning. There may be further I.C. trouble further inward but
this would probably necessitate your taking the I.C. part and doing a
microscopic observation. In that case, it would probably not be worth your
company's trouble to investigate further.

You can look for additional signs like resistors, capacitors, and power
transistors (especially the plastic variety) blowing apart.

Hope this helps.
 
Most important symptoms are best evidence - what is and is
not damaged. For example, a differential power surge might
simply put damage on input filter capacitors to power supply.
But a common mode transient would bypass power supply to seek
an earth ground path via some other computer connection.

Lightning does not damage fuses or blow out light bulbs.
However damage created by lightning can be followed by a
higher energy source that would create that physical damage -
normal AC power now passing through short circuited
electronics.

Therefore the first step is to identify the path of that
surge transient. For example, a typical path is incoming on
AC electric, through motherboard and modem, to earth ground on
phone line. In this case, a typically damaged part is the off
hook relay on DAA side of modem.

Notice where damage is - in DAA section - closer to phone
line. And yet surge was incoming on AC electric. Right.
Component closest to incoming surge is not first damaged.
Surge is electricity. It first established a complete
electric circuit from cloud to earth. Only when electricity
was flowing through that entire circuit - all components in
that circuit - does the weakest component(s) fail.

Important is the entire circuit. That means building wiring
which is also part of the circuit. One cannot do a proper
analysis only from the equipment. The entire electrical
circuit includes building wires connected to that equipment.

And so we start with - what was damaged? And what were all
the connections to that equipment when damage occurred. IOW
we want to know, for example, if this was a common mode or
differential mode transient. And from the breakdown voltage
rating for those components, what ballpark voltage was
confronted.

ForensicOke wrote:
...
Furthermore, I would like to know if there is a way to differentiate
between a power surge not caused by lightning and a spike caused by
lightning by testing the components on the motherboard?

I know that there is a difference in change over time between a
normal power surge and surge caused by lightning (transient much
faster in nanosecond) and was wondering if that perhaps can in
some way give an indication on the components which of the two it
is. We have tried signal tracking but that can only give an
indication of a good, bad, or marginal components on the mobo
and does not help very much.

Normally we check for lightning activity via the Weather Service
in the area stipulated by the claimant as place of loss, but
remember we are in South Africa! The Weather Service here only keep
record of lightning activity and can not differentiate between
whether it was cloud-to-cloud activity or cloud-to-ground activity.
Damage via lightning (we have discussed this with various lightning
experts in the US) can only take place when it is a cloud-to-ground
strike and thus we are back to square 1.
Click to expand...
 
I just want to thank you guys for all the info and response. We are now
working through it and really appreciate it!

Thanks!


"the Wiz" <look@message.body> wrote in message
news:va6jpv8s8ftvs5ce6huj22gs6ukac5di52@4ax.com...
"ForensicOke" <myforensic@hotmail.com> wrote:

BlankIs there anybody out there that can provide me with some advice in
this regard.

We test electronic equipment for the insurance industry of new claimants
that have institute a claim regarding "Lightning damage/ power surge damage"
Click to expand...
to computers and computer equipment.
Regards


That could be very dependent on the way the equipment is used.

Big damage is easy to see; but some damage can only be verified by testing

Some years ago, I worked for a major telecom that used a serial network
(DataKit) for their PC/printer/UNIX networking. The headquarters building
was
struck by lightning and we found LOTS of dead serial ports over the next
few
days.

No visible motherboard damage on most of the PC's that were on floors
other than
the one where the lightning hit, just sufficient electrical damage to make
the
serial ports non-functional. Since the serial port was on the
motherboard, the
motherboard had to be replaced on every problem computer.


More about me: http://www.jecarter.com/
VB3/VB6/NSBasic Palm/C/PowerBasic source code:
http://www.jecarter.com/programs.html
Drivers for Pablo graphics tablet and JamCam cameras:
http://home.earthlink.net/~mwbt/
johnecarter at@at mindspring dot.dot com. Fix the obvious to reply by
email.
Click to expand...
 
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