a couple of weekends ago, our house got hit by lightning.
it was pretty nasty. the storm came quite suddenly. I had gone to the kitchen to get a drink of water when I heard the lightning strike and saw a flash of light from the study.
the end damage meant that my modem, router, and desktop were all out.
the desktop went to the shop for repairs. ends up that the motherboard is out. the shop was willing to lend me a few parts to use temporarily while it's on warranty repair but they didn't have a spare motherboard at the time, so I have to do without a desktop for the time being. fine, no problems.
then came the matter of the modem. I got a new Linksys modem/router, which was supposed to be pretty good. had problems setting it up cause my notebook is dying (optical drive acting crazy, audio drivers and speakers shot, and just found out my ethernet adaptor is gone, and I've already replaced the hard disk once)
tried to set up the router using a friend's notebook (the Dell XPS is a beautiful system :p) but failed to get an internet connection. noticed the DSL light wasn't lit, which means that it wasn't getting any internet signal from the line.
I tried everything I could figure out, still couldn't get the DSL light to come on or any kind of internet connection. finally we got TM to come over to check on the line.
I wasn't home at the time, Alice was there. They checked using their own cheap non-branded modem - and it worked... then they told her "your modem is not supported, why don't you get some cheapo modem" (or something along those lines). they then told her to get our modem checked at the shop.
so when I came back, I went over to the shop. they tested it - and it worked fine. came back home, and again, not working. tried it at a friend's place - not working
finally found the workaround in the lowyat.net forums, apparently somebody else had the same problem and posted the same questions on the forum (with the exact same modem, too!)
apparently, I had to change one of the settings to change the DSL mode to a lower one to accommodate TM's outdated technology. what a let-down.
but anyway, I have an internet connection again (albeit, with a dodgy notebook, but at least I'm online), no thanks to TM. First world infrastructure? I don't think so, and this is supposed to be one of the most modern and hi-tech cities in the country. what a laugh.
2 comments:
Bro sorry to hear about the damage. Yeah I remember we lost our Rm5k TV due to lightning too some years ago, which is why my parents go all out unplugging everything including the phone when there is a bad storm. Hehe, except the fridge. And lighting DOES strike twice, something about lowest point of impedence, blah blah science. Hopefully its not going to cost too much to replace what you've lost. Well you could just wait till your next birthday...
Tell me about it. I had a fried modem last month, and like you I went and got a new one (a D-Link). I spent almost 2 days trying to get it to work, trying every possible configuration setting you could think of.
In the end, I called TM and was put on hold for up to 15 minutes each time. And I had to keep calling them a few times, each time getting a different support staff.
They asked me to try basic stuff like clearing my dns cache which I've done.
They even said that they can't support me because I use a Mac (fortunately I booted up my work XP laptop instead)
In the end they referred me to a specialist at VADS and they fixed it. There was some port setting on their side.
Sigh.
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