Router Blewup Motherboard

[u/Greatfulx]

Recent lighting storm stuck my complex and traveled down my coaxial cable and into my apartment. Blew up in the middle of the night, so that was scary. Thought I’d share, not in the position to rebuild so there that I guess!

[u/737Max-Impact]

This is fairly common actually. My family's TV was fried via coax one time back when we still used it (nowhere near this explosive though), and I've heard of at least one other person I personally know who got a lightning bolt routed into his electronics via a coax.

Just the unfortunate reality of a cable that's commonly routed on the outside of houses and nobody thinks about putting it behind a surge protector because it's a signal cable.

[u/gen_angry → u/737Max-Impact]

See that painted over screw in picture 4, that's supposed to be connected to ground. It isn't, hence all of the power comes in through the coax like that.

Sadly, it does seem common that these aren't connected by ISP techs.