Hardware Safety Tips - Grounding Lesson 101

Hardware Safety Tips - Grounding Lesson 101

Have you ever been grounded by your parents, or grounded your kids? What happens.. you get grounded after something bad happens. Well here's the word today: Ground yourself before something bad happens. Sounds kinda strange? Well.. that's what you've got to do when you're working with computers.

When you walk around the house, what happens? You drag your feet around the carpet, touch things, and make sparks. Ok, you probably don't do it intentionally, but it's still there. If you do this, and decide to touch a motherboard and make a spark, well.. plan on buying a new computer. If you're going to install some hardware, or look inside your computer for some unknown reason, you need to know how to stop a spark. Here's the steps you need to follow to ground yourself:

First, unplug all the cables in the back of the computer except the power cable.

Open up the computer (take off the case cover with a screwdriver, large stick, your fingers, teeth, sledge hammer, etc. Most of us prefer the fingers or screwdriver method, however.)

Touch the powerbox and no place else. Well.. ok.. you can touch the metal case inside the computer because it is connected to the powerbox. Eitherway, this is where you discharge all your static. If you make a spark here, that's ok. Just don't touch any piece of electronic equipment before doing this. Go out an buy a grounding wrist strap if you don't have one. Connect the wire on the wrist strap to the metal casing inside the computer (not to any other electrical components or wires), and put the wrist part.. on your wrist. This will keep you grounded to the computer.

Now that you're grounded, unplug the power cable.

Continue on with whatever you have to do..

That's all there is to it. Practice this as often as you open up your computer to look at something or install hardware. If you don't, you'll be sorry.

It was once thought to be safe to connect your grounding wrist strap to the powerbox, but I must warn against this. I was merely installing a DVD-ROM in a computer at my high school, and followed these directions exactly (as I do everytime). And when I connected the alligator clip from the wrist strap to the powerbox, the clip actually touched something inside the powerbox, and caused a large spark. The computer didn't turn on.. and the powerbox had to be replaced. So the moral of this story is to always ground to a metal part of the case and not the powerbox itself. Make sure the clip doesn't touch anything electrical.

How to hold a card

When holding a card, do not touch the electrical stuff. Hold the card by the edges (and not the contacts that plug into the computer) and the metal part that goes on the case (that you see from the back of the computer when the card is in the computer). Any static can destroy the card. If you must store the card, try your best to locate an anti-static bag. Be gentle, and remember that the card is your friend.

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