Hi,

I'll bet hardly anyone in this forum does this when working at their bench (including me), but you should really use a ground strap when working with PICs. This is especially important in the manufacturing stage. Static discharges are scary because they can weaken a trace inside a chip without actually breaking it. Everything appears to run fine until the trace, which was "almost" destroyed during that initial static discharge, decides to suddenly break.

Believe me, it happens, and customers "love" it.
You think it's a pain when you're developing a product on the bench? Wait until you have several units in the field and the tech support calls start coming in.

Stay grounded!



Regards,