Cable Modem Dead

[MacGyverSG1]

My Zoom cable modem died some time Saturday night or Sunday morning. I figured it was an issue with Comca$t since the lights on the modem were blinking in a looping pattern. I've seen this a few times over the years. I usually pull the power, coax and cable going to router. Then reconnect coax and power and modem will boot up fine. Then reconnect router. That was not working. Called Comca$t Sunday afternoon and they said everything was fine on their end. The best they could do was send someone to my house Monday afternoon to check cables and splitter, then finally modem. I told them that all of the cables are fine and there is no splitter (I installed an Electroline 8-port DropAMP). The Zoom cable modem is mine, so I went to BestBuy and bought a new modem to try out. Installed the modem and called Comca$t back to give them MAC and model#. After they updated the modem software it was up and running.

[anon]

Comcast seem like a bunch of fucks, you should cancel your service and clone a modem from a nearby node instead

[MacGyverSG1]

Comcast seem like a bunch of fucks, you should cancel your service and clone a modem from a nearby node instead

If I had the technical knowledge and assurance I wouldn't get caught, I might give that a try. I remember reading about a possible "black box" for cable TV that would require a cloned MAC address. I guess it would be too difficult to market and nothing came of it. I miss the old days of analog.

Their service is hit or miss. Back in 2005 I was experiencing scrolling horizontal ghost lines on all my TVs. They sent out a tech and he started cutting off all the cable ends where the splitters (one two-way and one four-way) were. Put all new connectors on. Nothing. Tried new splitters. Nothing. Tried a different cable box on one TV. Nothing. Guy was clueless. The next day a new guy came out. He went right to the drop line pedestal and checked in there. Nothing. Then he started to unearth the drop line at my house. It was just RG6 buried about 6-8 inches. The drop line was measured out at 152 feet. About six feet from the house there was damage to the cable jacket in a few places. The guy cut out the damaged section and spliced in a patch. The TV picture quality was better, but not perfect. I started to pull more of the drop line out of the ground and found more damaged areas. The guy made a call and set up an appointment for a new drop line to be installed. The next day that same guy and another dude showed up in two trucks with a Ditch Witch Trencher and a large coil of RG11 preinstalled in a flexible conduit. In short time they had the new drop line installed and hooked up. TV PQ was perfect. All of that was done at no cost to me. They would probably charge to have that work done today. It had only been a few months since they took over from Adelphia Communications so they were very helpful. Not to mention that part of the deal to take over certain Adelphia customers, they had to upgrade the entire cable system that was originally installed in the 70's.