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Static Discharge Causes Flaky Damage

by Stephen Bucaro    

Some time ago I purchased a motherboard, CPU, and memory from a local computer store. The sales person did me the "favor" of plugging the CPU and memory into the motherboard. I held my breath as this was done with no care whatsoever taken to prevent damage from a possible electrostatic discharge.

A static discharge can damage or destroy integrated circuit electronics. The problem is that you may not see a visible spark. You may not know that a static discharge occurred. And, you are lucky if the static discharge totally destroyed the circuit.

Often a component is only damaged and appears to work. This type of damage can produce occasional or frequent errors. This is what technicians call "flaky" because the failure does not occur reliably enough to be able to track it down.

The technician can't determine if the errors are caused by software or hardware. All they can do is keep changing things and waiting to see if the problem goes away. This is very time consuming and costly.

The proper way to handle computer circuits is to wear a grounded wrist strap. Any electrical charge that builds up on your body is then immediately conducted to ground. But experienced technicians have tricks for controlling static electricity.

One trick is to leave the circuit board laying on top of an antistatic bag or antistatic foam as much as possible. Another is to leave the computer plugged into the AC outlet with the computers power switch off. This places ground on the computers metal case. Then the technician works with one hand always on a metal part of the case. Any electrical charge that builds up on your body is then immediately conducted to ground the same as with a wrist strap.

The important thing is to take static discharge seriously. Don't stick yourself or someone else with a flaky computer because you were too lazy to take basic care to protect against static discharge.