News Summary

• On Call is The Register's weekly, reader-contributed tech support column.
• This week, we meet a reader we'll Regomize as “Lachlan,” who once did tech support for a senior exec.
• The exec asked Lachlan for help diagnosing a sudden inability to send or receive email, an obvious hindrance to the side hustle.
• “By looking at the modem you couldn’t normally see if any of the chips were faulty.
• In this case there was a black soot mark in the shape of the voltage regulator chip which sits between the phone line and the sensitive chips on the modem.”