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Static Electricity Question and Beware!
I was using earbuds plugged into my 8200 sitiing in a cloth recliner when I sat up and pulled away from the chair back and all of a sudden I had mini lighting bolts jumping from the buds to my skin. The right went dead, the left went dead, then no sound at all from anywhere. I ran a diagnostic and found my sound card blown. The next day my son wiped out his brand new laptop sitting in the same chair with the same earbuds. All of that to ask this question....Is this a common problem and/or am I a total fool to believe that the PC and laptop should be protected from this when using it? I understand the precautions needed when opening one up to work on however I have not heard of having to discharge during use to prevent this kind of damage. A tech at one of the local chains informed me that adequate ground is incorporated through hard wiring power supply and through the battery when not using wall current with ground that will protect the equipment when using it. After blowing a sound card and a laptop, that staement kind of goes in one earbud and out the other so to speak. Any advise or opinons on this? Thanks!!
fireberd
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March 22nd, 2006 12:00
Static Electricity can be a major issue with solid state devices, not just PC's. I use to manage a large LAN/WAN network and hardware help desk for a large federal government agency that had many field offices throughout the US. Static electricity in our offices was a major issue every day. Just someone walking across a carpeted floor (and most offices are carpeted) and touching a keyboard could cause, if nothing more the system to halt and have to power it off and back on to work. Our agency did an in-depth study on static electricity and in one study it looked at the pantyhose that many female workers wore and found out there was very high static electricity generated by pantyhose. Other "man made" clothing fibers are also prone to producing static electricity.
I would dump the plastic earbuds you have in favor of a better headset type or you will continue to have problems.
In a very dry home atmosphere (and with heat or in air conditioned environments) many times the humidity can be very low and with low humidity it's just right for static electricity.
As far as a PC grounding, that's great but if you have static electricity built up you potentially can discharge it through the PC to the AC power ground and the consequences can be nothing to damage of internal components (as you found out).
Some things to minimize static electricity, that we used in offices, was to spray the carpets with Downy fabric softener and that helped to minimize static build up from carpets. There are anti static mats that can be placed under chairs or under keyboards that operators (users) can touch before touching the PC or keyboard/mouse. There are two types of anti static mats, one type is just a mat that has anti static properties and there is another type that actually plugs into the ground connection in a grounded AC power outlet. We found the type that plugs into the AC power ground is the only type that worked, at all.
Toploader427
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March 22nd, 2006 15:00
Thank you for a very infomed response!!! I nowtrust that extra caution be taken not only when servicing but when using as well. The plastic earbuds are history for sure. I wish this problem was more fore-warned against such -as-in-information in user guides etc. Thank You!