Testing for Lightning damage and power surge damage to computers

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:

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

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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.

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"ForensicOke"  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

regard.

have institute a claim regarding "Lightning damage/ power surge damage" to computers and computer equipment.

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:

VB3/VB6/NSBasic Palm/C/PowerBasic source code: Drivers for Pablo graphics tablet and JamCam cameras: 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

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Yes, don't post in HTML. You're more likely to get responses.

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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 c> ...

I just want to thank you guys for all the info and response. We are now working through it and really appreciate it!

Thanks!

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