static discharge precautions

[Gil Kloepfer Jr.]

In article <461 at manta.pha.pa.us> brant at 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 at manta.pha.pa.us, brant at 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 at icus.islp.ny.us
Islip Terrace, NY  11752   "Life's a ...  well, you know..."