A few days ago, my house got hit by lightning (as did I, but that's another story). The lightning had the effect of letting the magic smoke out of most of my electronic gear, especially my favorite pieces (2 TiVos, HDTV, and sadly, empeg).

My empeg was sitting in it's Mark Lord dock on the computer desk, with connections to power, computer via serial, and router via ethernet. The computer lost it's ethernet port, as did the cable modem. The port on the router that the computer plugs in to is dead as well. So, there was obviously some sort of spike going through the ethernet cabling on that desk.

Now, the empeg powers up, but gets the dreaded "No hard disk found". I opened it up and looked around really closely, but couldn't see any obvious place where the smoke had escaped. I did look really hard at the IDE header, and noticed that it does in fact look like the pictures in the FAQ of the IDE header solder problem. However, I've never had a problem with the disks not being recognized before.

In the boot log, there was the line about not finding the CS4231A. So, I loaded up the latest Hijack (thanks, Mark!) to bypass that. Unfortunately, even with the latest Hijack, I'm getting nowhere.

Attached is the latest boot log. The main things I'm concerned about are the CS4231a problem and the line that reads "smc_init couldn't find card". Well, and the whole not recognizing the drives thing.

Is there a chance that my IDE header just coincidentally decided to lift off the mainboard at the same time as the lightning hit? Or, do signs indicate actual fried stuff on the motherboard at this point?

You have a stuck bit on your IDE bus. It looks to be bit 5. Try the cable and IDE header first, but it's usually a dead ethernet chip at fault. It will need to be replaced, but the line going to the ethernet IC can be cut to restore the Empeg (minus the ethernet).

Hope this helps,
Stu

Yup, like Stu said, something on the peripheral bus is pulling down (to zero) D5 (the sixth data line). So it is unlikely to be a header problem, and much more likely to be a damaged ethernet chip. The CS4231A is probably just fine, and is likely to show up as working again once the ethernet problem has been addressed.

As Stu said, the BIG option is to have the chip replaced. The quick option is to have someone just lift the D5 pin of the ethernet chip, so that it no longer shorts out the peripheral bus. No ethernet that way, but everything else ought to work.

Cheers

Thanks Stu & Mark for the help with the ethernet chip. Right now, the empeg isn't installed in my car yet, so it functions as a networked music server. Without ethernet, it wouldn't be of much use in that capacity. So, I'd be looking to either repair or replace depending on what the insurance company tells me.

Now, on to the lightning story. Here's the short version (which in itself is kind of long):

I live in Tucson, Arizona, which is bone dry 48 weeks of the year, and subject to torrential monsoon rains the other four. I had just gone to bed about 2 AM Monday morning when I heard the rain start and really come down hard. There's a couple of spots in my roof that are prone to leaking in the really heavy rains, so I decided to get up and make sure nothing valuable was directly under those spots. While I was up, I though I'd take a look out the window at the storm. I had just dug a bigger ditch for the runoff on the side of my house the day before, so I wanted to see how that was working.

Turns out there was about 20 times more water flowing than that ditch could ever hope to carry. It was just more water than I'd ever even seen outside of a river. I just stood there marveling at how much of my driveway it was carrying away for several minutes. Every time the lightning flashed, I though "Oh good, I can get a better look". None of the lightning seemed particularly close, so it never would have occurred to me that I was in any danger.

All of a sudden, there was a blinding flash and a very loud crash. I felt a ton of electricity going through me. My very first thought was "Oh, I've heard that you can kind of feel a nearby lightning strike and I could feel that a little, so that's probably a good warning to maybe take cover". It was a couple of seconds before I realized that I was on the floor and it was a lot more than just feeling it a little. It definitely had hit me.

My wife had heard the crash of lightning and heard my initial moans, but thought I was just expressing frustration that the power was out. When I started calling out "Help", though, she came running. I told her I had been struck by lightning, and that I felt like I was hurt but would probably be okay but she should call an ambulance anyway. My initial assessment was that even though I couldn't walk, I would be able to move okay within a couple of hours and just be sore for a few days. However, I didn't want to be the judge of whether or not I needed medical attention, since it seemed like it was possible I was in shock and actually had a hole in my chest or something.

The ambulance took five minutes before they got near my house, then I heard sirens for another five minutes while they figured out where to turn. Up until the paramedics got there, I hadn't seen myself, so at that point I wouldn't have been surprised if they had found a charred smoking hole in my leg or something. When they got upstairs and shone their flashlights on me however, there was no charring or smoking or anything. Just some 1st degree burns on my left leg and right foot.

They insisted on taking me to the hospital, which is literally a block and a half away. At the hospital, they wanted to do bloodwork to make sure my internal organs hadn't shut down, and do a chest x-ray and EKG to check out my heart. Everything checked out fine, so they sent me home after a few hours, at which point I was walking okay (albeit a bit stiff).

The rest of this week I've been stiff and sore. I've got the burns which possibly correlate with entry and exit points, plus wherever I'm burned on the inside from the jolt going through me. Also, pretty much every muscle in my body is sore from the clenching when the electricity actually went through me. I've got really deep bruises on both my biceps for some reason, as well.

The actual lightning hit a 10-foot antenna mast on my house (that we weren't even using; it just came with the house). The mast was mounted about five feet away from where I was standing. The mast was grounded, but not very well, and the ground wire either broke or melted in the strike. The lightning blew out a 1 ft x 1.5 ft chunk of drywall where it hit, and a couple of smaller holes. It fried all of the electronics in that room (HDTV, TiVo, dvd player, A/V receiver, etc.), even though they were plugged into an APC UPS. The only thing in that room to survive was the linksys router, oddly enough. In our bedroom, everything survived but the TiVo. In my office, the aforementioned computer/modem/router/empeg damage happened through the ethernet connections between them all. One fuse box in the house started smoking after the power was turned back on and will evidently need to be replaced with a breaker box (finally using 20th century tech).

Other than that, no major damage, and no lasting damage to me other than the soreness and my brand new irrational fear of being inside the house after dark. That should go away in a few days, I reckon. It's clear that most of the lightning either went through the antenna's ground or elsewhere through the house, and I just got enough to shake me up a little. However, I'm still very thankful to be alive, and have reordered my priorities a little to make sure I get signed up for good life insurance ASAP.

I'm in Phoenix and I've been enjoying the hell out of the light shows we've been getting. Sorry to hear that your's didn't go so well. :P

I don't have a fancy camera setup, but I did manage to capture a few photos of some lightning.

http://gallery.l0ser.net/v/daily/2006/July/2006-07-24/

Note: They're called 'accidental' because I didn't have a very good method of capturing them. I basically sat there pulling the shutter switch as fast as it would take pictures. Out of 61 pictures I got 57 black and 4 with lightning.