What Happened?

This will probably have been the longest gap between blog post since I started back in 2010.  What Happened?

Ten days ago we were seated in the front room watching the heavy spring rain fall when the was a simultaneously loud clap of thunder and lightening bolt.  The room lit up and a long brown streak shot across the room as a very frightened Molly headed for somewhere to hide.  I commented “That was close!”

Several hours later Jan noticed we had no internet coverage.  I suspect our cable connection had temporarily dropped out.  The physical infrastructure is provided by the National Broadband Network (NBN).  When the network has previously failed it usually takes 2-3 hours to come back online.  I waited 24 hours (this is Australia with [according to our politicians] the best internet in the world) and when the connection was still offline I phoned our internet provider to report the issue.  “Your call is important to us….. You are advancing the queue…. all our customer support staff are busy…. we are experiencing high demand…… you may be interest in the following products.. etc, etc”  You get the idea.  Eventually I was able to speak with someone who spent 30 minutes talking me through the fault finding method… which I previously done!  Yes… they would lodge a fault with the NBN.  I was advised it would likely take 2-3 days for a technician to contact us (best internet in the world).

The next day Jan had a call from the NBN Technician.  He was in the area and was it convenient to visit in the next hour.  This was such a shock Jan needed to sit down and let her heart settle.

The technician arrived within 40 minutes and immediately tested the cable connection.  An electric spike had “fried” the NBN modem.  It’s NBN equipment and was replaced at no cost to us.  He did mention it was the fourth modem he had replaced in the neighbourhood that morning and he had a further four local premises to attend.

Unfortunately whilst the cable connection was restored we still didn’t have the internet.  Our router had also been “fried” and required replacing.  The router model is now obsolete requiring me to purchase a different model with a different configuration system.  Eventually that was done and the internet restored.

However Jan then complained she couldn’t stream any of her videos from the media server over our local network.   After some fault finding I identified the problem as a “fried” ethernet port on the media server motherboard.   Not wanting to go to the expense of replacing the motherboard I purchased a cheap PCI-E ethernet card for the computer and inserted it into a spare slot on the motherboard.  We again had a local network connection between the media server and the rest of the local network.   Well for 48 hours and then the media server motherboard failed.

Of course the motherboard was obsolete meaning I had to replace both it and the cpu.  More expense! 

After rebuilding the media server I discovered it wouldn’t connect to the local network.  Seven days later; after much cursing and loss of hair the media server is streaming video.  It’s not fully functional, but as I am due to head away from home in two days for three weeks I’ve decided to leave the setup functioning as is.  I’ll do the final sorting on my return. 

A long explanation why there haven’t been any posts.

The original motherboard with red arrow pointing to fried ethernet port

New motherboard and cpu

Testing the new motherboard and cpu before going to the effort to install them in the case

Installed, but second test before installing the power supply