Chapter 4 - My first customer site visit


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The next day I set out to visit one of CIMCO's customers together with Bob. It was quite a journey about two hours by van. The factory which produced animal food was located in the middle of nowhere and their problem was that a lightning struck a day before our arrival. Our task was to do an assessment of the damage and to find out why it happened in the first place. I was pretty amazed that all of the PC workstations in the office were basically fried. Then we found out that the PC in the weighing station which was located about 100 meters from the office was fried as well. The one thing we could say right away was that the damage was substantial. Next we had to find out what had happened. In those days Ethernet or "Cheapernet" was quite common, and to connect the PC in the weighing station with the network in the office, the electrician of that company simply dug a shallow trench about 20 cm deep between the weighing station and the office. Then put the coax cable of the network inside and closed the trench again. So here was an excellent antenna which would receive the induction created by a lightning. Next we found out that none of the PC was grounded, nor was the shielding of the coax cable. No wonder the high voltage induced into the cable was searching for a way out and unfortunately that way led through the PCs.

Bob and I couldn't believe it. So we called the electrician of the factory and I asked him about the curious way of running network cables without steel protection tubing across the yard - which in Germany would have been the standard procedure.... Oh well I was no longer in Germany, so I decided not to expect anything being done the way I might have learned it. Bob took me aside and here came the next lesson about Thailand. Bob said that I could not just accuse the guy of doing something wrong, but should rather ignore this and fix it myself. This way the guy could sneak over our shoulders, learn something and then next time do it better. "Fine with me", I thought and started grounding the shunts of the ethernet. The next amazing things were the American type, three prong power plugs of the PCs which simply did not fit into the power outlets with only two holes. So the grounding pin simply got cut off. Or to put it differently, there was no grounding whatsoever, but there has been something else which caught my attention. The wall outlet could receive American Type plugs with the grounding pin cut off and it could receive German plugs. That was clever, those wall outlets made it possible to connect electric and electronic equipment regardless where it came from - well at least when it ran on something like 220 Volts. Next interesting insight: The Thais are quickly to adopt technology and make it work their way !

The folloing day I had an appointment at the immigration office and at the labour department, another interesting experience.


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