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Running your cable modem from your PCs ATX

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blueroomelectronics

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My Scientific Atlanta cable modem uses a 12v @ 1a wall wart and I wondered what problems might arise from powering it directly from my gateway PCs power supply. The gateway (clarkconnect router, NAS) shutsdown during the wee hours (3w standby vs 38w running) and the cable modem is 8w running. I'm assuming the biggest concern is lightning but I can put an arrestor on the coax from the cable company.
Thoughts?
 
My Scientific Atlanta cable modem uses a 12v @ 1a wall wart and I wondered what problems might arise from powering it directly from my gateway PCs power supply. The gateway (clarkconnect router, NAS) shutsdown during the wee hours (3w standby vs 38w running) and the cable modem is 8w running. I'm assuming the biggest concern is lightning but I can put an arrestor on the coax from the cable company.
Thoughts?
I feel, it almost comparable to to an external power supply. Lightening and other protections are already taken care by the power supply company and the cable service provider at the cable termination on the modem.
The modem body, PC body are to be connected together and connected to protective ground, as per what i believe.

Even otherwise, the PC is connected to the modem, by the shield wire of the interconnecting LAN or USB cable (which ever is used).
 
Good point, the modem can be connected via USB (I'm using Ethernet as there doesn't appear to be USB Linux drivers available) but since USB shares a common ground they must have some form of lightning arrestors on the cable lines.
 
Blueroom lightning protection for cable lines is done at the box on the side of the house, not on the device.
 
I'm not sure about your setup exactly blueroom, but with mine the cable modem has to be powered up and running before the router is turned on. Depends on your router.
 
I was planning on discussing my router hardware in another thread.

In a nutshell it's a low power Intel Atom Mini-ITX motherboard & Gigabit PCI network card with a 750G drive in a wee case. About $250 worth of gear and the free ClarkConnect Home 4.3 software (linux LAMP firewall, gateway, nas, printserver, etc...)

Much cheaper than an HP Home Server and really fast too. Draws under 40W normally with the drive spinning. It will become part of a home automation server eventually as it can be accessed like anyother website if you want. It's also just about the fastest gigabit router I've ever used.
 
Before you go hardwiring everything, test it first. Turn everything off, wait a couple minutes, then turn everything on at once and see what happens.
 
I didn't catch that =) I responded too fast. If it's a PC that's the router you should be fine, unless something is wrong cable modems will come up way faster than a PC booting. Standby might be an issues though.
 
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