11 Jul
2002
11 Jul
'02
6:31 p.m.
I was with a guy who was testing out LAN drops with a
laptop
to see which ones were working and we went into a conference room
where none of the drops were labeled and due to painting and such you
couldn't tell the difference between them and the phone lines, which
were for a multiline system with intercom and all the other goodies.
He plugged the laptop up to what ended up being one of the phone
jacks and there was a nice shower of sparks. Somehow the laptop cmae
out of it without any damage.
Strange, a 10baseT/100baseT Ethernet interface should be able withstand
telephone voltages (even ringing), even if the jack has them wired to the
data pairs. Even if it sustained damage, there should not have been any
sparks.