its fine.

The bags job is to SHORT OUT all the contacts of electronics. static damages things when it goes THROUGH parts. You can wrap things in aluminum foil and it will protect the same.

I use these: https://www.ebay.de/itm/391793026524

luckybob wrote:

its fine.

The bags job is to SHORT OUT all the contacts of electronics. static damages things when it goes THROUGH parts. You can wrap things in aluminum foil and it will protect the same.

Nope. The job of static bags is to provide a certain amount of resistive bleed, thereby dissipating any static charge. They won't necessarily crowbar the contacts on your retro stuff.

Well, maybe not a complete dead short, but the principle is the same.

The pink bags are trash!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imdtXcnywb8

If you're in the US:
http://www.staticbags.com/
direct link to the tape:
http://www.staticbags.com/StaticTape.html

I've never bought the tape, but I ordered bags and labels from him a couple times several years ago. Good experience, no problems.

Old, but also interesting :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLOQ7zOWGAA

First Epsiode (1 of 4):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WHbcd4NGJQ

In practice, however, I'm afraid no one really cares anymore. 🙁

Modern CMOS parts have built-in ESD protection (to some degree; they sure can still be damaged),
while ancient TTL chips are usually too primitive to take damage due to their low density (microns instead of nanometre).

I'm not saying that they can't be damaged by ESD, Of course. Sure they can (esp. RAM chips)!
Though personally, I believe that early CMOS parts might be more sensitive to ESD.
At least, I wasn't able to kill any TTL chips so far (I often was walking over carpets, when I was working with them).

Anyway, I'm a layman when it comes to these things (that topic is rather scientific),
so perhaps it is better to be on the safe side and try use proper antistatic bags.
For my old mainboards, I'm using antistatic mats, even. 😀

The few times I've seen a previously-opened antistatic bag taped shut, it was taped with plain paper masking tape and in all of those cases it never seemed to cause any issues.

http://www.gndzero.com/blog/truth-11-myths-el … atic-discharge/
http://www.gndzero.com/blog/469-2/

A good read for everyone.

Using antistatic tape is just too much IMHO unless the component in question is bigger than the bag... you can just use paper tape and be done with it if you are worried about static build up.

The pink bag on the EEVBlog video is not an antistatic one, it's just a packing bag. There are proper pink and transparent antistatic bags with esd markings and all the bells and whistles.

derSammler wrote:

http://www.gndzero.com/blog/truth-11-myths-el … atic-discharge/
http://www.gndzero.com/blog/469-2/

A good read for everyone.

Call me suspicious if you want, but to me the blog of a company that makes anti-ESD equipment doesn't qualify exactly as a neutral source of information 😉 .

Just do a google search. There are lots of (technical) articles explaining why ESD is a big problem, even if many people think it isn't, since "they never had any ESD damaged". Problem is, most articles are long and not easy to understand. Those two blog entries are, no matter the source.

I have everything in pink bags otherwise I would pay more for the bag as for most cards...

It offers basic protection against ESD but main point is that they have a suitable size and prevent the cards from scratching each other in my storage boxes...

Antistatic tape...total overload?

If anyone in Australia is interested in this...I found some cheap stuff being sold at Spotlight, cellulose, claims anti-static. Only a few bucks a reel. I have a couple on order now.You can also find them on eBay.

https://www.spotlightstores.com/craft-hobbies … pe/p/BP80349494