Static Electricity

[torrasque]

My new(ish) computer's CD drive is really slow. It takes a long time to spin up and down, and it is very noisy. My friend also recently upgraded his old CD-RW drive, and since I don't have one, he says he may give it to me. I also came up with the idea of replacing my loud CD drive with the one from my old computer, which is quieter and seems faster than the defective(?) one.

The problem is that I have never upgraded anything inside my computer. It sounds really simple, but I am really worried about damaging one of my computers with the evils of static electricity. How would I avoid this annoying problem?

 

[Jeratain]

You shouldn't worry too much. Just unplug the case and make sure there is no power running to it. Find yourself a place like a tile floor or table to work on since working on carpet can help cause the static electricity you're scared of (even though I always just use my carpet.)

When you open your case, put your hand to a piece of metal to rid yourself of any static electricity. Then just go about switching the CD Drives. If I were you, I'd keep the old one and add the new one as well so you'd have two CD drives - but you have to set the jumpers and also have an available slot in your case to do this.

 

[Perfection]

And you can always make/buy an anti-static wrist thingy

 

[anarres]

There are 2 amazingly easy and quick ways to fully discharge static, before you go playing inside.

1) Leave the power cord plugged in to the computer, just turn off the switch on your power supply (if there is one, if not no worries). This is very very safe, there is no power coming from the cord, but the outside of your case is now part of earth, from the plug. Earth from a plug is the best kind of earth you can get!

2) Touch a radiator, since the metal from them is connected through your whole water heating system and out in to the neighbourhood water pipe system.

Touching a metal chair (for instance) will discharge *very little* static that has buit up on your body, since it is not very big, and not earthed to anything else.

Making/using an anti-static wrist band is pointless when you connect it to the case and unplug the power cord, as nearly everyone who uses them does. Remember, keep the power cable plugged in.

Finally, don't worry about it. The only electrical parts you need to be aware of are the chips on the motherboard itself (the really big flat thing with the chips on ). Just remember not to shove a magnet up against them, or to get your screwdriver and prise them off, and it will all be fine.

 

[Jamesds]

That's interesting!

I've never had any static problems though

 

[unrelated]

This is very very safe, there is no power coming from the cord, but the outside of your case is now part of earth, from the plug. Earth from a plug is the best kind of earth you can get!

Just thought I'd make a quick comment. There is power coming from the chord and it is going into your motherboard(used to power LED's mainly) so you still can harm yourself. The upside, of course, is as long as your mb is connected to your case via at least one METAL screw, your case is grounded through the electrical outlet.

 

[anarres]

unrelated,

The case isn't grounded through the motherboard, the metal case of the power supply should be grounded directly to the power cord. This in turn is attached to the case, grounding that.

If you check your motherborad, the spacers are often plastic, and you normally have little cardboard washers between the motherboard and the case. Also, each screw hole is seperated from the rest of the circuitry of the motherboard. The motherboard simply isn't earthed, there is no earth cable in the power cord that you plug in to the motherboard from the power supply, so how could it be earthed?

The reason I didn't mention the dribble of power that sometimes runs to the motherboard was because I didn't want anyone to think this was a serious amount of power that could cause harm, it can't. If your power supply has a little switch on it (an extra on/off switch), then turning that to off will stop the dribble to the motherboard. Even if you don't have this, you are still better off leaving it plugged in to change a CD drive.

 

[smalltalk]

I can see no big static electricity problem with changing a CD-Drive. After all it is just about connecting the power chord, the ATAPI/SCSI cable and the audio cable.

Let me tell you a story: I was working with this 50 year old feller who had dealt with computers since the 70ties. We were trying to install new network adaptors in a few computers, but the OS sometimes just wouldn't recognise them on the first try.

You may know the procedure: shutting down your computer, inserting card, reboot, driver install, reboot, see if it works - if it doesn't, remove driver from registry, reboot - time and again.
(Windows Doesn'tWorkstation) :flamedevi:

Anyway, at some point, we got quite pissed, and what he did was inserting the cards while the computer was running. It worked perfectly. I was thoroughly amazed, 'cause I had expected the card's chips to be fried!

We did only about 2 - 3 computers that way, so I really can't recommend this procedure to anyone, the next card might as well have been damaged. But I now regard statics less of an issue. Still I'm carefull with memory-modules and expensive processors.

 

[Pillager]

Originally posted by anarres
There are 2 amazingly easy and quick ways to fully discharge static, before you go playing inside.

1) Leave the power cord plugged in to the computer, just turn off the switch on your power supply (if there is one, if not no worries). This is very very safe, there is no power coming from the cord, but the outside of your case is now part of earth, from the plug. Earth from a plug is the best kind of earth you can get!

2) Touch a radiator, since the metal from them is connected through your whole water heating system and out in to the neighbourhood water pipe system.

Touching a metal chair (for instance) will discharge *very little* static that has buit up on your body, since it is not very big, and not earthed to anything else.

Making/using an anti-static wrist band is pointless when you connect it to the case and unplug the power cord, as nearly everyone who uses them does. Remember, keep the power cable plugged in.

Finally, don't worry about it. The only electrical parts you need to be aware of are the chips on the motherboard itself (the really big flat thing with the chips on ). Just remember not to shove a magnet up against them, or to get your screwdriver and prise them off, and it will all be fine.

Also, you should make sure you touch an unpainted part of the radiator.