Quote Originally Posted by dragons_fire View Post
GOOD TO KNOW... i learn so much from all of you on here.... i know these PICs say they are static sensitive, but how bad is it?? should i be wearing a strap every time i think about looking at it?? or do i really need to worry about it. i know with the 16f devices i have used, they say they are static sensitive, but i have never worried about it and never had any problems...
I haven't COMPLETELY blown a PIC up with static...YET! I know how dry it gets where you're at (remember, I'm just a bit south-east of you). My 'shop' is in the basement, usually about 20% humidity in the winter, carpet on the floor, and so on and so on.
I think, that is, THINK, the worst I've done to a PIC is blow out an output driver or two on a few PICs...and I'm not even 100% sure it was static that did it. Probably from putting them in the socket backwards, etc.
However, I've heard that the 18F's are quite a bit more static sensitive than the 16F's were, probably due to the smaller gate size on the die...not sure...don't care. As long as I don't smoke anymore, I'm all good...