gil@limbic.UUCP (Gil Kloepfer Jr.) (01/16/89)
In article <461@manta.pha.pa.us> brant@manta.pha.pa.us (Brant Cheikes) writes: >For all of you who futz around inside your UNIXpc's, soldering things, >swapping devices, etc., what precautions do you take to avoid static >discharge damage? >-- >Brant Cheikes >University of Pennsylvania >Department of Computer and Information Science >brant@manta.pha.pa.us, brant@linc.cis.upenn.edu, bpa!manta!brant What an interesting question! My answer is going to be surprising and dangerous, but since I'm one of the folks that this is question is directed at... I generally just try to follow a little common sense, like don't wear a static-filled sweater, no shoes, kick my cat out of the room for a while, etc. Other than this, I don't do too much else, and all I can say is that I've been LUCKY. What *SHOULD* be done is to perform the work using a grounded conductive mat, a grounded soldering iron, and wearing a grounded wrist strap. Care should be taken in contacting ANYTHING to the motherboard. Now...one other thing about grounded things and electrical outlets. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE buy that dumb little $5 outlet tester before plugging equipment into an outlet or grounding yourself to it. A while back, I was doing some work in my apt with a UNIX-pc and some other junk on a separate power supply. When I saw the flash I nearly died. My circuit did die, and so did the motherboard. The hot and neutral of the outlet were wired BACKWARDS. The circuit I had sent 120V through my circuit into the motherboard (momentarily). Good thing I had schematics and knew the problem well enough to be able to find the bad chip on the motherboard and repair it. Luckily, that was all that got fried... (BTW: After using the tester, I found that 75% of my outlets are ungrounded, even though they have a ground hole, and three are wired backward, including one in the kitchen and the one for the refrigerator). ------ Gil Kloepfer, Jr. U-Net: {decuac,boulder,talcott,sbcs}!icus!limbic!gil ICUS Software Systems Voice: (516) 968-6860 [H] (516) 746-2350 x219 [W] P.O. Box 1 Internet: gil@icus.islp.ny.us Islip Terrace, NY 11752 "Life's a ... well, you know..."