Did you ever damage anything with a static discharge...

Did you ever damage anything with a static discharge? I've seen people handle their hardware in careless ways and I've not once to this day heard of someone damaging their hardware through static discharge.

So is static discharge a meme?

of course it is. i put all my pc parts on the carpet when i clean them.

It probably only applies to very sensitive equipment. Because I've never damaged a computer via static electricity.

I fried some RAM back in the 90s this way. The old 30-pin SIMM kind. Or maybe it was a 72-pin one. Whatever the case, it definitely happened, I felt the static discharge through my fingertip, and the memory was dead.

Yes. Unplug and open your box. Put on programming socks and rub feet on your carpet. Touch components directly. Repeat last two steps. Report back after you've touched every surface on your mobo/gpu.

my t410 alt/ctrl stopped working
had to change keyboard

Probably just the obscene amount of crust underneath the key

I live in an area with high humidity. Static discharge is a meme except for a max of 3 days a year. The only time I worry about static discharge is on those days or when I'm constructing a circuit I designed. Odds are I'm going to have to do some troubleshooting. Having another possible cause of problems is a pain in the ass.

I've fried an acer netbook and a PSP from static electricity. The meme is real.

Killed a lot of arduinos, raspberrys. I never hard a PC work again after vacuum cleanig the dust out even with the fan stopped.

Not a meme, depends what you're doing in what environment.

The other day I was measuring voltage on a phone line, on the way I saw a 1 cm arc before touching a light switch. You never know what random thing builds up charge. You can be a walking capacitor.

I used to vacuum clean the inside of my PC all the time, never had a problem. PC still works

nope

I don't know anything I 100% surely damaged with static.
I shocked touch panels at work countless times and none of them was damaged.

try vacuuming some printer toner, you will see arcs everywhere

As far as I know I haven't broken anything with static electricity. But who knows. It may be possible to do damage but not the kind of damage that destroys the component instantly.

I bought a desktop with 4gb ram
One day the fucker refused to turn on, so I decided to check inside
I felt a small discharge when checking rams and noticed I forgot to unplug the damn thing after I got tired of doing it
Everything went back to normal but Speccy read only 3gb ram, I was a brainlet at that time so I decided to keep things that way

It is hard to damage populated PCBs with ESD especially considering amount of ESD protection diodes in devices. Of course that doesn't mean you should be careless and act like a tard while handling them.

Discrete components on the other hand are extremely fragile and prone to ESD such as JFETs or MOSFETs.

ran a pc caseless for a while. once, when inserting a usb stick, i heard a loud pop and a capacitor flew up about half a meter. i imagine that was static discharge, in addition to the end of my mb.

That was a short.

I fried a transistor, thought it was broken so I went ahead and fried another one. Then I realized.

I've fried plenty of laser diodes by it. Those things are super fragile.

Finished circuit boards are usually less susceptible as they have capacitors and clamping diodes and other protective components. But damage can still happen.

I killed 3 computers with the power of static. Doesn't help that it's winter, it's Kansas, and I have carpet everywhere

I work for a company that manufactures plastic bags, one time i had a hand on a roll that was winding and needed to pause a counter on the machine to run some scrap and a bolt jumped about 4 inch from my finger to the counter and completely fried it, the engineer had to replace the part and my finger hurt like hell. fun times...i only wish i could harness and hone this power...'for the good of mankind'

I haven't personally but I was once helping my college roommate build his $3500 gaming rig. While I was getting the custom water tubing sorted and assembled he decided to put the mobo in the chassis without the standoffs. Instantly fried.

Motherboard went kaboot with static discharge. I was cleaning up/rebuilding the PC. Motherboard died on the way due to micro-static discharge

ESD damage is real. A lot of components have some measure of protection built in, and ports are especially well protected, but I can guarantee you will do damage by touching traces and pins on a mobo without grounding first. ESD does not always kill on the first strike, but damage is cumulative and it could cause a component to misbehave under some conditions, but work fine in others.

Grounding before working is trivial. Do it.

>carpet
why do people still do this? it just collects dust and static, and makes everything harder to clean

perfectly smooth flat hard seamless floors (like that fake wood plastic stuff) ftw

I make static like a wizard.
I can't stand up from my chair without zapping stuff.
No casualities so far but I'm risking a battlestation worth over €10k.
Any ideas on prevention? No carpet. Wood floor only. Leap chair with fabric upholstery.

How2ground?

It was more of a problem 15+ years ago with more sensitive hardware.

Yes, old SD-RAM stick. Or SIMM, don't remember.
DDR is way more resistant to it.

Wrist strap

Don't boards need to be zapped with 20KV to pass FCC regulations? Laptops, phones, etc?

Touch the chassis or use a ground strap that's plugged into mains earth.

CPU pins are just as sensitive, because any mitigation techniques take board/die space and/or decrease slew rate. Card edge connectors on RAM and PCI components are far more durable these days though. A lot of components have tiny diode clamps these days too, which help, but they shouldn't be relied on.

Human body model ESD testing only applies to things a user can normally touch, like usb pins or the casing. We're talking about handling raw components.

>So is static discharge a meme?

ever touched your radiator and got an electric shock? it rarely happens, but sometimes it does. the exact same concept

Renting

Northern climate. Even in slippers a tile or wood floor will suck the heat right out of your feet.

>Did you ever damage anything with a static discharge?
didn't, but I was pretty worried about it when I lived up in PA
once pulled a sweater over my hair in the winter and made these huge fucking bolts appear with a loud-ass crackle, startled the fuck out of me

down here in FL, I've pretty much forgotten that ESD was a thing
been shocked probably like thrice in eight years
worked on bare boards in a carpeted room with a sweater on and have had jack shit happen down here

I roasted a server mobo once. I was installing a network card but didn't ground the chassis after unplugging the power cable. Brushed the motherboard with the card's bracket, saw a spark; no mo mobo.

Fucking ouch. Was it a four socket monstrosity like your pic?

CPUs are bullet-proof. At least for me.

Yep, same model actually.

>Did you ever damage anything with a static discharge?
>be me, barely teen
>have to get shitty toshiba tablet pc fixed because of broken hinge (not my fault)
>take it to local shop
>service is shit, was finished weeks after it was supposed to be done
>they fried my fucking audio
>constantly crackles while using it
>plug in an rca to 3.5mm cable to end the crackling
>touch one of the rca plugs
>giant blue spark
>oh shit
>unplug
>crackling gone
I think it "fixed" the problem by putting that audio channel out of it's misery because everything was mono after that. Family didn't want to take it back and make them fix it because the shop was in a weird location and had weird hours. Fuck that.

Static discharge itself is not a meme. I unironically start my gas stove that way.
However I've never damaged any electronics with ESD.

I've seen the usb-c cable on my phone charger discharge and produce a blue spark against my aluminum phone. Needless to say it was made in China.

Some friends and I rubbed some RAM on the carpet to see what it would do once
It was fine

Raw components are much better protected against ESD these days as well.

Early CMOS ICs were very easily damaged by ESD, there's a lot more done to mitigate that nowadays.

um, I fried my t410 while I was cleaning out the dust in my fan using a small air compressor. Does that count?

Is that Mike Pence blessing a faggot

>Did you ever damage anything with a static discharge?
No. And I don't really take many precautions other than setting the pc/laptop on top of a cloth to not scratch it. It's one of those things that the general public turned from
>there's a chance it might happen
to
>undeniable truth

I keep accumulating static every day and it sucks.
Any recommendations? Maybe anti static shoelaces or shoe soles which keep me grounded? I need something inconspicuous.

>used to work for PC repair shop back in the day
>carried all spare RAM, CPUs, HDDs, video/sound, network cards, etc. everything in big plastic tubs
>all shit from a year or two ago going all the way back to old 486/Pentium days
>everything all thrown in there, not organized
>sat around building shitty systems for fun and taking them apart again when there were no jobs
>nothing ever died or didn't POST
I even built my current i7+GTX970 system with those same parts and never had a problem.

Of course we did have a big rubber mat on the main work desk and we also had one of those bracelet things but nobody ever used those. I always got told off by the head guy about static discharge but never had any issues with it myself. Maybe it was more of a problem in the old, old days and it's a bit of a hold over from then? A bit before my time, perhaps.

But mathematically there are infinite points so he'll be touching his pc forever

Actually, now that I think about it all of us were wearing rubber soled boots at that job. Maybe that had something to do with never having a problem?

Still, the big ass plastic tubs we had surely wouldn't have been ideal.

Go barefoot

yes. back in 1999 I didn't know shit about 'puters.
I just took apart my compaq's mobo and graphics card because I was curious. Did it on carpet too because I was equally retarded. when i put them back together the system was dead and I wondered why. fortunately it was under warranty. I didn't venture again down that path, but I did learn a few years later the dangers of static and the importance of grounding. and it doesn't matter if you don't feel the zap. it can happen anyway.

I once had a bolt of static lighting come out my butt when I was on the toilet. The thunderclap scared the crap out of me. :)

I've seen it happen with laser printer developer powder, but never with toner.
What's the magic?

Wouldn't rubber soled shoes cause more of an issue because the static you accumulate can't discharge as easily?

Today due to modern technology, it would be very hard to do it. Can't guarantee for vintage tho. Just keep those gloves on user.

not one single time and i don't even own a ground strap

I use a anti static wrist strap everytime

With a vacuum, of course?

First computer I assembled I didnt put in any standoffs.

It wouldnt turn on.

Took it apart and put the standoffs in.

Turned on and worked perfectly until I upgraded a couple years later.

Because that shorts shit to ground.
It doesn't have anything to do with ESD

I fucked up a gpu last week after working the vacuum at a few mm from the surface. Cold, dry day, apparently vacuums can pile up thousands of volts worth of static.
If it wasn't ESD what killed it then my bucks are on the spinning of the fan in reverse at high speed.

I know you are suppposed to connect the anti-static mat to the floor, but this floor is actually a dielectric.
Is it bad if I connect the anti-static mat to the mains ground? Can some bad volts come up from there and zap the fuck out of me?

No shit.

Sorry, I didnt know this was exclusive esd club.

Yell at the other guy that didnt put standoffs as well.

Here's the thing: You usually don't know straight away. Instead you start getting random BSODs a year later, having completely forgotten about the ESD event.

Then when you build your replacement machine, you're careless again and don't bother using a strap. After all, you've never damaged anything with static. Right?

static discharge is a big deal in the fab processes , once you have the parts in your hand as a consumer its far less likely that you can damage it from static.

you cant kill a pc by spinning the fan in reverse , it does not generate anywhere near enough of an electrical charge to do anything.

>petting cat
>cat wanders off behind PC
>faint static snap
>computer shuts off
>boot back up
>keyboard and mouse don't work anymore
>everything on USB doesn't work anymore, actually
>fuck
>have to drag my ass down to microcenter to get a PCI-e USB expansion card

Everything else still works fine, but the USB ports on the Mobo only deliver power now, no data.