Guys, this IS my field, I'm a PC/Mac/LAN support tech and LAN administrator.
It'll take more than a few dimes.
I once worked for a company that did one stage of the silicon chipmaking
process, "implanting the ions". Basically, they had a room full of
truck-sized particle accelerators and they'd blast the hell out of wafers.
The actual accelerator chamber was about 4ft across on most machines, and
every once in a while a rig would "arc", sending a 2ft bolt of lightning
bouncing around inside the chamber.
Absolute EM hell. We had to run PCs in that. The biggest problems were the
serial data cables hooked up to the implant machines themselves, they each
had to be shielded. Ethernet LAN cables weren't able to maintain data
integrity (this was thin coax cable days versus the newer 10baseT Cat5
twisted pair stuff) so we had to run old-fashioned ARCNet wiring, a slower
obsolete LAN cable type.
Nowadays, the most common data cabling in the corporate world is 10baseT
"heavy duty phone wire", basically. If you run that crap too close to a
transformer or fluorescent light ballast, it poops out on you. What I'm
saying is, forget crashing a PC from 10 feet; you point that turkey anywhere
near a modern corporate office from across the street and it'll be instant
"goodbye LAN connections".
And there's NO WAY of shielding it. The only solution is to go to older,
clunkier data cable types but that's a major PITA.
Every other cable hooked up to a PC can act as an antennae too, that
includes printer cables, monitor/keyboard/mouse wires, the lot. You CAN
shield the chassis pretty easily, except that on a laptop you're liable to
add undesired weight depending on materials used.
Shielding PCs is a much bigger job than you'd think.
Jim March
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