2015-03-29
RF into a networkcard crashing a computer 5 years ago
I recently had the main PC that is connected to the amateur radio crash regularly when I was active on the 20 meter amateur band (14.000 - 14.250 MHz) which is at the moment the most interesting band for me. This PC is thompson, a Dell OptiPlex 745. This led to serious annoyances as cqrlog, the logging program I use depends on MySQL which handles crashes badly. I got very good at recovering the database and reinstalling cqrlog. I thought it was time for a new PC but in the mean time I was dismantling some other old PC's and found an Intel E-1000 gigabit network card. Since the network switch thompson is connected to always showed strange activity after the PC had crashed I wondered if the on-board network card of the PC was the main cause. So I disabled the on-board network interface and installed the Intel E-1000 card. So far the PC hasn't crashed since installing the card. I have been active on the radio two evenings since the installation. Update 2015-04-06: A few crashes have happened since but not as many as happened when I got really annoyed.