cablemodem vs vp6 - help!

[Guest]

I had both my motherboards fry the other day, and I think my cable modem is surging - anyone else ever have that problem?

One was gone - had to replace.
On my VP6, however, I have the following:
The harddrive is fried (checked it on another machine, sent it for recovery). When I attach a formatted HD, it works no problem. When I try to format a fresh HD with the VP6, it dosent read, and wont boot from it.
So--- it reads an already formatted HD (at least one of them), but dosent read or format one, and it fried one HD.
Could it be a surge? Could it be an IDE problem?

Comments on this would be appreciated.
Running VP6 dual 1000s 1ghz ram. W2k (the tested hd was partitioned 2k and 98).

Thanks!
echo

 

[jlanka]

What type of cablemodem do you have? I can't visualize either an ethernet or USB version frying a mobo. Stranger things have happened, I guess.

<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>

 

[Guest]

The cablemodem is the 3com sharkfin. It's both upload and download.
My old systems board friend inexplicably a few months ago. I rebuilt with the VP6, has been working great. All of a sudden on Friday my harddrive failed (sounds mechancial, makes lovely noises). -
What leads me to believe its the cable modem: I dragged the other machine over and set it up to log on and troubleshoot the first. Got on, froze. Restarted and ended up with continual beeping (usually a video or ram failure - tested and narrowed to the mobo). At the *same* time the cable modem went out, as did our tv's cable - and got fuzzy lines.
Thinking that maybe the cable line may not be grounded properly or something - if you have another deduction as to what could be causing these problems, great.
Also deduced that it may be electrical wires behind our walls, so i moved my station. Been losing hardware left and right, with barely a connection - besides the cable modem.

Echo

 

[jlanka]

Thats an ethernet modem? Can't see as there would be any appreciable current going into your NIC through the 10BaseT cable. Anyone?

<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>

 

[Guest]

Hrm -
Ethernet, yes. Comments VERY welcome then, as I'm at a loss. The second machine fried pretty much immediately upon connecting, and the cable modem is the only thing that was new -
again, same time the tv went out (and stayed out for about 10 hours). Hrm...
Suggestions welcome! I just want to stop these problems - Got myself an ethernet surge protector as well - that had better work.

Thx
echo