Subtitles of the Movie

One topic that is guaranteed to be on the A Plus exam is ESD, or electrostatic discharge. Now, electrostatic discharge by definition is simply the passing of a static electrical charge. Now here's what you need to remember for the exam: E-S-D equals B-A-D. ESDs are bad; they're always bad, okay. So anytime this comes up in the exam watch out for it. What happens is ESD occurs when two objects with different amounts of static electricity come into contact with one another. Now, these normally happen more often in a dry, cool environment. We've all experienced this. You walk in a house on a dry, cool day, you walk across the carpet and you touch a metal doorknob, and there's that little shock. Okay. Now that's an irritation to us, but there's enough voltage in that shock to destroy computer components, okay. It, it'll literally burn them up. So let's talk about some things that we can do to avoid it. First of all we can use an anti-static wrist strap, and you see one, a picture of one here. This goes around your wrist, this clips onto a metal part of the PC that you've opened up and working on and it simply keeps the static potential, or the charge, equal between you and the PC so there's no sudden rushes of energy that will damage PC parts. You will see this on the exam. Anytime you're working on a PC, according to the exam, you should be wearing one. In the real world you should be wearing one as well, but sometimes you can't, and we'll talk about what to do in that instance in just a few minutes. The next thing is an anti-static mat. Now, what happens when I remove a part from a PC, even though I'm wearing a wrist strap and I lay that part down on the table. It's no longer being kept equal between me and the wrist strap and the ah PC, so the next time I touch it I may have raised my ah potential, and it has stayed the same and so there's going to be that rush. And so what I'm going to do is stand on an anti-static mat and this will make sure that we all stay ah together as far as ah potential. And here's a picture of what this mat looks like, and notice you just simply roll this out and stand on it and this gets attached to the PC and so now it's keeping up with you know everybody is staying equal and we're not damaging anything. The next thing that you may hear about on the exam is an anti-static bag. And if you've ever ordered any kind of PC part or component, video cards for example, they came in a bag like this. Now what this bag is doing is it is simply ah dispersing electro ah electrical charges when you touch the bag. The bag has properties that allows it to protect the components inside, so any static electrical charges that hit that bag get dispersed and they're kept away from the contents inside. So any time you store any kind of component, any time you ship any kind of component, when it's outside that PC for any length of time should be placed in one of these bags and you will certainly see this on the exam as well. Now, what happens in real life when you have to open a PC and work on it, but you don't have a wrist strap, or you don't have an anti-static mat. There is a work-around. First of all, touch the power supply first on the computer, okay. It will handle the electro static discharges that may take place and protect the inner parts of the PC, and then touch it repeatedly as you work on the PC, and this will continually equalize the potential between you and the PC and protect the parts. Pretty straightforward. Now. However, you want to ALWAYS, and notice that's in all caps, ALWAYS unplug a PC before working on it. Now, in real life, do we always do this, eh, unfortunately, not. Should we? Yes. As far a the exam is concerned, the answer is always yes. You always unplug a PC before you work on it. So just make sure you agree with them on that on the exam. Easy way to remember this: E-S-D equals B-A-D. Anytime you see electro static discharge on the exam, be very careful. ESD is never good when we're a computer ah technician. Okay? So, ah watch for ESD on the exam, guarantee you it'll be there. This should be a gimme question.