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From: cpcahil@virtech.uucp (Conor P. Cahill)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386
Subject: Re: Need Recommendations On 386/486 UNIX systems
Keywords: unix, 386/486
Message-ID: <1990Dec23.162033.3287@virtech.uucp>
Date: 23 Dec 90 16:20:33 GMT
References: <8204@uwm.edu> <1990Dec18.002013.28881@news.iastate.edu> <1990Dec22.143706.4493@virtech.uucp> <358@metran.UUCP>
Reply-To: cpcahil@virtech.UUCP (Conor P. Cahill)
Organization: Virtual Technologies Inc., Sterling VA
Lines: 30

In article <358@metran.UUCP> jay@metran.UUCP (Jay Ts) writes:
>One of my clients suffered a direct lightning strike to their building this

From my experience this is a very rare occurence (not lightning striking, but
lightning strikes causing damage to serial port cards). 

>Arnet reports that 70% of their cards were returned due to surges on the
>serial lines.
>
>Arnet now includes port surge protection as
>standard equipment in their multiport cards. 

This sounds real fishy to me.   Imagine me saying something like "70% of
the software developed without CPC standards ends up panicing the system",
so you should buy my software which happens to be built with CPC standards.

The other way to look at it is that maybe the arnet boards are soo bad
that the blow apart form the smallest voltage spike or short.

Don't take me wrong.  I'm not saying how good or bad the arnet cards are. 
I'm only saying that lightning is not a major concern for day to day 
operations of a "normal" system (of course if the system must have 100%
uptime even in the worst set of conditions AND the client is willing
to pay the price,  you can use the extra money to provide lightning
arrestors).

-- 
Conor P. Cahill            (703)430-9247        Virtual Technologies, Inc.,
uunet!virtech!cpcahil                           46030 Manekin Plaza, Suite 160
                                                Sterling, VA 22170