worth knowing

[vanman]

You often hear about a pc not powering up.This could either be one of the following: 1.Mains power failure.2.Defective wiring. 3.Power supply faulty.4.Ram defective.5.Power not switched on ha!! ha!!! which i have found on many occasions.6.Now this an interesting one which i came upon in a computer magazine called pc format, which states that it could be because of static electricity.To rectify this you should unplug everything from the back of the case,hold the power button in for 30 seconds while the power is disconnected then plug it all back in.

Hope this is of use to somebody.
regards
v/man.

[qwerty_smith]

i once heard somewhere that when you shuffle your feet and touch a doorknob, that big spark that you get is around 40-60 volts but you only need around 4 to ruin a motherboard. static electricity can be a dangerous thing. thats why you use wriststraps to ground yourself when changing a motherboard or a chip.

NOTE: My numbers my be slightly off, but i dont think by much. I'm going to have to look this up

[TechieChick]

Here is a decent article on electro static discharge.

a) Walking across a carpet= 1,500 to 35,000 volts
b) Walking over untreated vinyl floor= 250 to 12,000 volts
c) Worker at a bench= 700 to 6,000 volts
d) Vinyl envelope used for work instructions= 600 to 7,000 volts
e) Picking up a common plastic bag from a bench= 1,200 to 20,000 volts