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Date: | Sat, 20 Jun 2009 11:17:40 -0700 |
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It is amazing how much play this discussion has had. To answer your
specific question, I looked inside my case. Assuming that the hard
drives, optical drives and floppy drives are internally insulated, it
appears that the motherboard and other components are insulated from the
case. Therefor, grounding oneself to the case carries no danger to the
computer innards. And assuming that the power supply is also internally
insulated, I do not see how discharging oneself to the case would result
in a discharge to the house circuit through a connected grounded power
cord whether the power supply is on or off. The static discharge is to
the air from the case. If one were to carry this to an extreme, the case
could have a separate grounding wire attached going to a separate
grounding rod.
There are many instances of similar static discharges to non grounded
items during one's lifetime. The most frequent one I've experienced is
touching metal desks and file cabinets that are sitting on wood floors.
Second on the list would be touching vehicles.
If a static discharge is to a component (the reason for protecting the
computer from oneself), the component is likely history before the
discharge even gets to the air or to some grounding provision. On the
other hand, if the desire is to protect oneself from the computer, at
least turn the power supply off at the power supply or simply disconnect
the power supply from the power source. And as an added precaution, do
not put fingers where they do not need to be.
Tom
Robert Citkowitz wrote:
> What-if question:
>
> If you connect yourself to the uplugged computer via wrist strap, couldn't you be zapping the computer/chips with whatever static charge you had built up (eg, the surprising, sparking amount you get during the dry winter after walking on a carpet) on the way to the computer?
>
> Rob
>
>
>
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