ebay ahhhh!!!

[KThunder]

look at this ebay auction.

beautious isnt it? except for the fact that that ausome card is sitting on a carpet. wallowing in static electricity. ive bought computer stuff that was pictured sitting on wooden floors before. this isnt healthy.

why? of all the things to put it on a rug is probably the worst.

[mrbill317]

Thats one heck of a nice card though.
Doubt I can afford that though.

It probably would be ok , ram chips are pretty durable.

[Oli_hd]

You would so hate my room, half of the computer parts are on the floor.
Its fine, Ive never damaged any one of them from doing it. (I havent even trod on one :-D )
Some things that are on the floor in my room at the moment:
Cyberstorm PPC Card
Emplant Card
Powerflyer
A1000 Motherboard
loads of CD's
yesterdays cloths... etc etc.

Also they put it on the carpet because its a good background, better than some patterned table or such like.
I think those pictures are well taken

[KThunder]

esd damage is cummulative and unpredictable in complex setups. the card could work fine for days or years or be unstable, or completely unusable
thats why they make esd bags. and techs use ground straps etc. when i worked at IBM we had ground straps, esd boots grounded work tables and tools and ionizer boxes.
if you ever pick up a card off your floor that hasnt been stepped on or even touched and it doesnt work youll know. well conductor oxide or esd damage.

[KThunder]

using a vise to hold it up for the camera would probably make for a decent pic also. (thats kind of an extreme example of my point)

[Gojirax]

RAM chips (And other ICs for that matter) are "Durable" to being burned out by static yes, but getting "Browned" out is another story.

Static will make a transistor "Weak" where it won't hold a charge for long. So if a browned out transistor has to hold a charge (A "1" in binary) for long it will often shut that one transistor down.

Now, since there are millions of transistors in a given chip having just one shut down won't usually be enough to cause a program to crash, but it's enough to cause a program to lock up momentarily, or cause some graphic glitches or sound glitches...

Generally it will cause intermittant system lock ups and random program crashes if enough of them get "Browned out"

[Homer]

{soapbox} It can't be said enough times ppl. Don't do it ! I work on trains in the UK and have had a lot of junior techs over the years telling me it doesn't matter not to bother using the correct ESD kit. They are the ones you find searching for strange intermittant faults later  :lol:
Anti static bags and wrist straps (etc) exist for a reason - Use them !
Oh, and I would not buy that Amiga card that had been sat on the carpet. A failure waiting to happen, and it will happen when you have paid good money for it ! {/soapbox}

[weirdami]

He could have at least picked a clean spot on the carpet to take the picture on anyway.

[magnetic]

Kthunder

LOL. You are right about the ESD stuff. You dont know how many Amiga repairs we've made due to users doing improper install of boards...

magnetic

ps. That is a funny pic, lets put this expensive card on the worst possible surface for static... You can also take a picture of it floating in the ocean,that would "look nice" too

 :madashell:

[adonay]

i remmember years ago i ruind a 128mb EDO those were not cheap but never had anny problems after that episode even with my agp\pci\miggy parts laying around betwen cloths etc. well annyways you can be unlucky but far from common if you ask most poeple. I had 1 episode amongs perhapps 5000 handling hardware\pcb and only 1 insident so too use all that stupid equiptment is beyond me. although i was always carefull with my BPPC cards never leaving static bag or amiga in the first place..

[weirdami]

I find that touching a grounded metal thing in your computer before doing fiddly repairs works just fine. As long as you're not cutting a rug while working on your electronics or playing speed metal bass guitar or touching a van de graff generator, there's no real problem. Anti-static bracelets belong in the clean room at Intel.

[tonyvdb]

The least he could have done was fill the bathtub with water and then placed it on a peice of styrofoam for the pic :lol: (would have made for a more interesting picture)

Seriously an anti static bag under the card would have done the trick. Oh and look he has is hands touching the underside of the card in one pic :-o

I would never buy it.

[steve30]

OMFG! It has been on the floor! I must not buy it as it must have been damaged in some way or another!

Like I care. I often have all sorts of various computers parts lying on my carpet. I have had a Marpet Developments RAM card sat on the carpet for the last 5 weeks or so. I have also had my Blizzard 1230 on the floor numerous times.

I think with most stuff, as long as there isn't much static electricity there shouldn't be a problem. Just if there were large amounts...