E S D Question

[Uncle Bob]

I'm going to move my computer and desk in to a 13'X15' bedroom.
This will be my computer room. Down side is the room is carpeted.
Removing carpet is out of the question. Question is, would an antistatic mat and/or wrist strap give enough ESD protection??

[bailey]

yes, but you realy don't need to go to that extreem.
unless you plan on doing work inside the computer, then the wrist strap is fine.

as long as the wall outlet is ground type, annd you use a surge protector power strip to plug everything into, it all will be fine and nothing to worry about at all.
go for it.

[Uncle Bob]

That is what I ment. If I want to do assembly work. Will I have the
protection needed to keep from toasting a circuit board, or CPU?

[SeanC]

Yep. You MIGHT get a small shock every now and again but nothing to worry about if you're just touching the case. As long as the computer is plugged in the shock will go through the electrical cord to the wall outlet ground.

Sean

[bailey]

just one caution,

when you work on a system, leave the power cord connected and pluged in the power strip, and have the power switch on the strip turned off, this way the case will still be connected to the earth ground while the power is off. that and the wrist strap will be safe to work on the inside of the case.

many make the mistake of thinking that having the wrist strap connected to the case is all you need, and have the power cord unpluged, doing this removes the earth ground, and then there is no safty in this as the entire case will be at the potencal of the full static charge, then they will connect the power cord giving the path to ground and zapp things go bad.

so keep the ground path to ground all the time.

[Uncle Bob]

Thanks for the replies.

[John Prophet]

Also..when touching a component...try to touch the case of the comp at the same time..like rest your forearms on the case while handling the cards....that keeps your hands etc grounded and "at the same potential" as the case etc.

And of course, when you handle cards and RAM use common sense...dont touch the contacts! lol.

The dudes I used to work with..no matter how you hand em something, they find a way to stick their grimy fingers all over the contacts...the main place they SHOULDNT touch, lol. RAM doesnt always "blow" at once the sec you touch it..it could be damaged and show up a month later.

So always try to handle cards and RAM by the EDGE of the cards....like the grownups used to tell us to handle pictures when we were kids.

JP

[Uncle Bob]

Originally posted by John Prophet
Also..when touching a component...try to touch the case of the comp at the same time..like rest your forearms on the case while handling the cards....that keeps your hands etc grounded and "at the same potential" as the case etc.

And of course, when you handle cards and RAM use common sense...dont touch the contacts! lol.

The dudes I used to work with..no matter how you hand em something, they find a way to stick their grimy fingers all over the contacts...the main place they SHOULDNT touch, lol. RAM doesnt always "blow" at once the sec you touch it..it could be damaged and show up a month later.

So always try to handle cards and RAM by the EDGE of the cards....like the grownups used to tell us to handle pictures when we were kids.

JP

Not to mentoin the corrotion from the skin and dirt acids.

[John Prophet]

Yeah, I tried to tell em....they thought that if it booted up anyway it was ok.

But they didnt put 2 and 2 together when half of their computers came back with dead boards a couple of months later....I tried to get them to see that SOMETHING was making the baords die after only 2 months..........wait..we used PC Chips boards.......nevermind.

JP

[Uncle Bob]

I learned the hard way But I did learn. It was my own machine
so the lesson stuck a bit tighter.