Pics of flaming PowerBook: cable company makes MacInferno
There are many ways to lose important data, and not just on your computer (where did I put my keys?). While it is almost always unexpected, and we as computer-users are often unprepared - occasionally data-loss occurs in ways that make you sit back and consider the infinite.
Recently at the OnDeckTech 24×7 help desk, I received a call from a customer who was upset, suspecting she had just potentially lost a TON of very valuable data. A video editor here in Chicago, she has a 15″ Powerbook with an 80GB HD, two Maxtor 300GB External Drives, and one 160GB LaCie Porsche drive. ALL of which fell victim to one of the most bizarre disasters I have encountered.
Here are some photographs of the damage:
What caused this was a rather sizable explosion originating from the customers cable modem. It occurred when the cable company installer was installing her service, and plugged her cable line into the “wrong outlet.” The wrong outlet indeed! Her cable modem caught fire, lighting the rest of her equipment on fire, too.
She could have followed every rule in the Backup Bible, and still lost over 500GB of critical data - because her cable company representative made a mistake. And oh what a mistake it was!!
This event reminds us that while some are more secure than others, no backup plan is 100% failsafe. The more bases you cover, the better off you’ll be. Since my last data loss, I have been a huge advocate of .Mac and the backup tools it offers, and the ever valuable (but unfortunately small) iDisk - which serves as a sort of USB flash drive in virtual space. Up to 4GB of virtual space.
Our technicians were able to recover this customer’s data successfully and migrate it to brand new external drives - on the cable company’s dime! 
Not every attempt can be as successful - everyone in this scenario got very lucky. Lucky that no data was lost or damaged, that nobody was seriously injured, and that this customer gets all brand new equipment - courtesy of the cable company. Do you love alliteration, too?
This episode of the exploding laptop should remind you that the value of your computer is negligible next to the value of your data. Backup now! Not only backup your data, but also set it up so that it happens automatically, and you can verify it occasionally.
[An update to this blog entry is here. ]
November 28th, 2006 at 3:34 pm
“Wrong outlet”? What kind of “wrong outlet” would blow out a cable modem like that? A 110-volt plug won’t fit in a 220-volt outlet. Coax cables are always low-voltage. So what on earth would cause this?
I don’t buy it.
November 28th, 2006 at 4:05 pm
I agree with the Skeptic above. I came to this article to see exactly what was plugged in where, because I can not imagine a scenario that does not involve a hammer of some sort causing this kind of damage.
November 28th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
.mac and Apple backup? I’ll never trust that software again.
My wife had her whole machine backed up with Backup to an external drive. She had a disk crash in her 12″ Powerbook, so we had to restore it.
Only problem was that about halfway into the restore, the images were damaged. Since they are disk images, I tried mounting them, and about halfway through, the next image was damaged so badly it couldn’t be mounted. Didn’t matter much after that, but at least I was able to copy off some of her documents from the later images.
Since then I don’t really have a good solution for backups for her, besides manually copying documents to network drives as often as possible.
So, please beware, and double-check the integrity of your backups BEFORE you need them.
November 28th, 2006 at 5:15 pm
I use Bounceback Pro from CMS and it works well. It also makes a bootable backup. It comes with a few of the One-touch backup drives.
November 28th, 2006 at 5:34 pm
I’m still waiting to hear exactly which “wrong outlet” the cable line was plugged into.
What other device uses coax connections?
November 28th, 2006 at 5:44 pm
Thank you for your comments. I will be posting more information tomorrow after meeting with the customer to migrate the rest of her data to new drives. She mentioned that she has the installation technician on tape admitting fault on his part, and the cable company has agreed to replace her equipment. He was on the roof of her house when this happened, and nobody was in the room with the modem/equipment (thankfully). That is all I know for sure at the moment, but for those skeptics, I will post her words detailing the traumatic event tomorrow.
November 28th, 2006 at 7:01 pm
sounds like the installer tied the cable ground lead to a hot circuit at the cable drop having you ground ref at 110vac will create havoc …..
November 29th, 2006 at 12:12 am
If this cable company offers telephone service like my cable company, there are power-passing ports on the service tap on the pole and there are regular posts on the tap. The power-passing ports pass along 70 volts that are required by your telephone in order to generate a ring cycle when someone tries to call your telephone number. It sounds like he pluged the drop for the cable modem outlet into a power-passing port on the tap and the 70 volt current caused the explosion of the modem.
November 29th, 2006 at 11:27 am
I am still calling B.S. You are telling me that some jackass on the roof plugged her cable connection into the wrong outlet, then the power surge came down her cable line and blew her laptop and external HDs and didn’t affect her televisions? I would maybe believe blowing an ethernet port but it looks like the damage is on the DC-in which the cable modem doesn’t plug into. This type of damage would have affected every electronic device in her home like a lightning strike. Silly trolls, tricks are for kids
November 29th, 2006 at 12:35 pm
I don’t know much about this. I do know that one time my cable company plugged in one of those amplifiers which powered to a power outlet. This was because my ground cable line didn’t have enough power to suffice my cable tv and cable internet or something. Like I said, I don’t know if that has enough power to do that amount of damage. Although, I was told by the cable guy once, that the amplifier could fry my cable modem if the ground cable has enough power or something like that (in case i ever moved to another place where it did).
November 29th, 2006 at 12:41 pm
Not to be a backup snob, but any tech worth their backup policy salt will tell you that having multiple copies of data at a single site is not anywhere close to being “100% failsafe.”
Anyone who doesn’t have at least 1 copy of ALL irreplaceable data at a remote site is at risk (as this story demonstrates.) Had this person (in this particular situation) followed this rule, they’d be fine.
November 29th, 2006 at 3:45 pm
In response to Fonetik’s hasty judgement:
> […] I would maybe believe blowing an ethernet port but it
> looks like the damage is on the DC-in which the cable modem
> doesn’t plug into. This type of damage would have affected every
> electronic device in her home like a lightning strike. Silly
> trolls, tricks are for kids
Um… the story says that the cable modem caught fire, which then
spread to the other affected devices. I don’t think it claims that the
damage to her computer and drives was a result of an overload directly
hitting those devices. Maybe read a little closer before you assume
someone is a troll, eh?
November 29th, 2006 at 6:01 pm
Actually this is quite possible. While on the roof, the technician could’ve been exposed to a worn or exposed cable supplied for any number or reasons. All it takes is for he/she to close the circuit and ground the current and voila! G5 toastbook (as long as everything is hooked up correctly to the modem/cpu/etc…) I agree this is an incredibly bizarre occurance, but it is quite feasible. It’s a wonder he/she didn’t seriously injure or kill themselves when exposed to this kind of power.
December 10th, 2006 at 5:53 pm
Then again, not everybody uses cable for their television. Satellite users can buy a cable access just for the internet. In this case, a mix-up at the cable drop would affect only the modem. Setting fire to an hypothetical pile of papers could do the rest of the damage. I don’t think electricity did the damage on the left of the powerbook since a modem cable connects to the ethernet port on the right of the laptop. Poor user, though, this kit looked nice!
December 10th, 2006 at 6:43 pm
It’s possible, i suppose, that the cable wasn’t fully “plugged in” to the wrong outlet, but that the core conductor of the coax was briefly, accidentally, and carelessly placed in a live AC outlet or otherwise allowed to contact an electrically hot conductor. For instance when the installer looked away or reached into a toolbox.
That’d be especially easy if the cable was freshly cut and stripped, and didn’t have the coax connector crimped on yet…
Similarly, the shielding of the coax cable might have contacted a live wire.
December 10th, 2006 at 6:44 pm
“I don’t think electricity did the damage on the left of the powerbook since a modem cable connects to the ethernet port on the right of the laptop.”
Only if they’re using ethernet to connect to the modem. Some modems offer USB in addition to ethernet.
Good reason to use wireless, though.
December 10th, 2006 at 10:38 pm
It doesn’t appear that the damage to the powerbook was through any wire connection, but just because of it’s proximity to the burning cable modem.
Yes, telephone ring signals are 70v but at a very low current (i’ve been zapped by this
) you would probably hear a capacitor pop if you ran that into the coax port, but no explosion. Same with every other scenario I can think of. Sat TV puts voltage on their coax to switch a relay between one set of transponders and another, that could be mixed up and would probably also be enough current to toast the modem but not blow it up.
No, this is a high current line voltage effect. He somehow brushed the coax past an uninsulated feeder to the house up there. Idiot is lucky to be alive.
December 11th, 2006 at 1:00 am
The skeptics crack me up here. Obviously you’ve never done field work for any length of time (I’ve been doing it for 10+ years).
This is VERY feasible if you’ve spent any time at all installing voice, cable, dsl, sat, etc into a wide variety of buildings using a variety of service providers. I have seen cabling and grounding scenarios that scared me so bad I didn’t even want to do the job. Not all things are created equal, my trolls.
As another poster pointed out, it’s VERY likely that the coax on the feed size was plugged into a power port, he shorted it on a live line or closed a nasty ground and BAM!!!
The bottom line is that when you go out to perform service on a residence, you never know what you’re going to find. I crawled through an attic once and my wrist brushed up against uninsulated LIVE 110v wires that were powering some homeowner-installed ceiling fans. I’ve seen circuit breaker panels with rigged breakers (ie circuit is not protected), coax strung through marshes… the list goes on and on…
December 11th, 2006 at 3:57 am
[…] Blogeintrag mit mehr Bildern […]
December 11th, 2006 at 7:57 am
Another possibility is the coax was actually plugged into the wall outlet (via a transformer) to power a cable TV signal amplifier and the technician accidentally plugged it into the modem instead of the amplifier. I have one sitting under my desk that the cable company installed because my cable signal was too weak.
Apparently they use standard coaxial cable as the power supply wire for these things, (presumably because its durable, cheap, and super easy to make custom lengths because they already have all the equipment)
Believe me, I’ve seem some pretty stupid cable TV technicians.
December 11th, 2006 at 3:16 pm
So where are the photos of the connection on the roof, that should settle it.
December 12th, 2006 at 10:59 am
I totally buy it as I’ve seen something like this happen before. I worked at a company that a technician swapped out a power supply in a closet for some sort of network-based serial connection (this was about 15 years ago). As soon as the guy turned on the power (which included the wrong power supply) it blew out the serial connections on about 10 different computers. The silicon was actually blown off of the chip itself. We wound up having to replace the motherboards on a bunch of Mac IIci’s and IBM Model 55 and Model 70’s.
December 19th, 2006 at 3:15 am
We are discussing this incident on an Electrical Forum, and would be pleased with more information or pictures of ‘What” the cable guy connected to.
http://electrical-contractor.net/ubb/Forum1/HTML/007884.html
December 27th, 2006 at 12:20 pm
And a few years ago I got the Indian houseboy in Saudi to install the television aerial. I got annoyed when he was relcaltriant about biting the co-ax to strip it. Turned out he was right all along and it was the mains cable I’d wrongly identified.
January 7th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
Iam a cable installer and when you ground cable you only ground it to cold water pipes, outside on hydro stacks, or you put in a ground rod buried 4 feet into the ground. anywhere else will get you fired for possible endangerment.
February 16th, 2007 at 4:10 am
For reasons apparent from this article, section 820-33 of the US NEC
(National Electrical Code) requires cable TV feeds to be grounded
where they enter houses. A lot of cable installers don’t seem to
bother; I had to fix this when I moved in. I wonder if the safety
ground was missing here? If so, that’s another count of negligence
against this cable company.
I’ve always been a little surprised that the electrical code allows
cable TV even with these grounds. Look at the cable TV line running
along a typical power/phone pole. It’s usually uninsulated. Now look
up at the top of the same pole. Those are the primary (high voltage)
power lines, and they’re also usually uninsulated. If a storm or an
accident causes a primary wire to fall on the TV cable, you can guess
what might happen in the houses in that neighborhood. Even proper
grounds can divert only so much fault current away from people and
property.
Telephone lines also share poles with power lines, but they’re always
insulated, the phone company tends to be more attentive to protection,
and line isolation transformers in modems and phones are standard
practice.
If fiber-to-the-home ever replaces phone and cable TV, events like
these can be a thing of the past.
February 16th, 2007 at 4:20 am
To Fonetik:
We don’t know the exact nature of the accident, but even if the installer applied 120VAC to the coax shield it’s still quite possible for only the cable modem and computer equipment to be destroyed while sparing her TV.
For damaging current to flow, a complete path to ground is necessary. If the cable modem were plugged into the laptop with USB, then the current could flow from the coax shield through the cable modem and on to the laptop via the USB ground. (As others point out, unlike Ethernet, USB provides no isolation). From there, the current could reach ground through either the laptop’s power supply or through one of the attached hard drives and their power supplies.
Most TVs, on the other hand, do not have 3-pin grounded power plugs. So even if you apply 120V to the coax shield going to the set, there would not necessarily be an onward path to ground to allow damaging current to flow through the TV.
March 17th, 2007 at 11:45 pm
[…] On November 16, an OnDeckTech 24×7 help desk technician received a call from a distraught Powerbook owner whose laptop had just been destroyed, trying to see if she could recover any of her data. Her 80GB 15″ Powerbook, her two Maxtor external 300GB drives and her 160GB LaCie Porche drive had all been affected by the explosion of her new cable modem. […]
March 17th, 2007 at 11:45 pm
[…] On November 16, an OnDeckTech 24×7 help desk technician received a call from a distraught PowerBook owner whose laptop had just been destroyed, trying to see if she could recover any of her data. Her 80GB 15-inch PowerBook, her two Maxtor external 300GB drives and her 160GB LaCie Porche drive had all been affected by the explosion of her new cable modem. […]
October 4th, 2007 at 6:57 am
[…] http://www.macwork.com/2006/11/28/pics-of-flaming-powerbook-cable-company-makes-macinferno/ […]
October 26th, 2007 at 2:13 am
I dont buy it. too much damage to the machine. sounds like a gimick for the backup features…..electronics START fires, not CATCH FIRE.
first, been in the CATV business for over 8 years now. seen and done it all.
2nd, any “voltage charge” that would cause this would not cause things to burst into flames, sparks yes, smoke yes, flames no. any flames would have been from a longer exposure to the voltage, first causing melting. if the guy had an exposed portion of the drop outside touching a power line with also an exposed portion, you would get the arced power and some damage, but the modem would die out and the ethernet port on the computer would be fried most likely, and possibly even the motherboard. that, i have seen happen. no flames. this would also have been along with a tv or more not liking life either.
now, as for cable signal itself, there is voltage on the main lines, from pole to pole, anywhere between 60 and 90 volts, to power the line extenders and amplifiers on the feeder line which feeds service to the whole street/neighborhood, THERE IS NO VOLTAGE COMING OUT OF ANY TAP TO YOUR HOUSE. the signal on the cable to your house is measured in dBmv (decibels in millivolts) in that signal it is RF and digital frequencies. if there were any voltage on there, all of your tvs would look like crap, and nothing would work. the way the phone service works from cable companies is also through another modem called an MTA. this is plugged into the house electrical outlet to provide the ring voltage for phones. you do not need 70 volts to power ring voltage like someone posted above. 5 volts will do. most of the electronics in your house would be fried at 70 volts.
now that being said, there could be a major problem with the customer’s power-ground. that means, the power to her house is unstable and the grounding out of the meter box is in a “floating status” that means, if the cable drop is grounded, and has a better connection to the ground than her power, guess what gets used as the ground? the cable does, and then things go boom, pop, spark, sizzle. been fried by that myself, it isnt fun. if that is the case, guess who should pay? part of my job has also been to assess the damage a customer has in claim against us, and things can go either way. most of it has to do with drilled holes or something a contracted installer did. i have also had to deal with claims of fried computers and a lot of people TRY to blame us for their own misfortune. want a tell tale way of being sure? look at the coax cable where the drop hits the house, there will be a ground block, grounded to the power ground or the ground rod itself. check that fitting, see if it has any blackened or sparked spots on it. then check the cable leading to the modem. if there is no damage out there….no blame.
last one i had like that, the guy was all over me bitching about how we were gonna pay for all of his stuff that was fried: microwave, washer, computer, tv’s, clocks, and phones. see anything yet? yeah, a lot of it wasnt hooked to cable. i showed him the cable lines outside. yeah, the drop TO THE HOUSE WAS FRIED, but at the groundblock, the line going INTO THE HOUSE WAS GOOD. that shows the groundblock did its job and blew out….WHEN LIGHTNING HIT 30 FEET FROM HIS HOUSE. and he tried to blame us……?
sorry buddy, it rode in on your power lines.
nice try….class dismissed.
October 26th, 2007 at 2:19 am
oh, and most cable modems have a DC power supply, usually with a 10 to 12 volt draw. that would take most of the brunt along with the modem. it would not explode.
October 30th, 2007 at 9:44 am
Yes, and the moon walk was faked, too.
This was real folks, even if it could have been described better.
March 16th, 2008 at 5:52 am
When I used to train undergraduate research assistants I would tell them “don’t fool yourself, unless you store copies of your hard drive files in a separate physical location, you don’t have a backup. What if the building burned down?”
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:02 pm
yes, it could be either of the scenarios someone has stated so far. I happen to work for a cable company in the chicago suburbs. our old DTS phone systems used what was called “NET POWER” from the tap, which means the coax coming to the house carries power along with it, to the phone modem, then from the phone modem a “customer port” carries video and data without the power present. a few inexperienced techs have been known to blow out the new phone modems that go inside the house now by attaching to net power. however, he could have also in some way attached the ground to a 110v live wire, somehow thinking that it was a ground, but he would have to be pretty dumb to do such a thing. but I feel just as bad for the installer, every day we run the risk of ending up in one of these “oh s**t what have I done!” situations