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PC Construction

Antistatic bags that I have come across have a conductive layer inside the bag. The outside, is none conductive.
 
MikeSh said:
Yes, we cross-posted. Even so, dissipating static requires conduction (eg. car tyres are made slightly conductive) and I've always been careful not to place live circuit boards on them.
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That's over-cautious. The term "dissipative" specifically means low (but not zero) conductance - a static charge (high voltage but low energy) will leak away but there is insufficient conduction to create a shock hazard if it came into contact with a live wire. If it shorted an operating circuit board, there would be no effect unless the board had very high impedance circuits (or carried high voltages).

In any case, as Wallace says, the dissipative surface is on the inside.
 
Black Hole said:
In any case, as Wallace says, the dissipative surface is on the inside.
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I believe the inside is aluminized and the dissipative coating is on the outside to leak any accumulated charge away.

EDIT: That's weird - half of this page didn't refresh before I replied. All of a sudden I can now see the "missing" comments. That's a first.
 
Colsta said:
Edit: For clarity, that is to say you can directly compare apples with apples using a standardised set of benchmarks
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wikipedian_protester.png
 
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Black Hole said:
If it shorted an operating circuit board, there would be no effect unless the board had very high impedance circuits (or carried high voltages).
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You are probably right, but 'high' is a vague term, so I would always err on the side of caution. I certainly wouldn't risk a high value mobo and processor on it being OK.
I sometimes work on PCBs with some mains powered sections, so I habitually make sure there is nothing potentially conductive underneath.
 
After 30 years doing this sort of thing in labs with static-dissipative benches etc etc, I don't have a problem with it. In fact, in the field, if we didn't have an anti-static mat to hand, we used shipping bags. With a high value processor, I would much rather have it on a static-dissipative surface than not!
 
Having obtained a VGA cable, I have ZEN hooked up to an Acer P193W which I believe is 1440x900 native. The trouble is I don't seem to be able to set the Mint desktop to the same res.

I've updated the video driver to the latest Nvidia, made sure DDC is enabled on the monitor (it's not obvious which is on and which off, but tried both), and the outcome has been more options in the display settings, but still not 1440x900.

Any clues?
 
Black Hole said:
Phoronix had come onto my radar.
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Currently trying to run Test Suite 50.

Black Hole said:
Anomaly: with an Ethernet cable plugged in (other end connects to my three-way HomePlug), the system won't start up from the power button (actually: screwdriver across the motherboard power button pins). Unplug the Ethernet, start it up, then reconnect the Ethernet, and it's fine. "Feels like" and earth loop issue.
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This appears to be a red herring. No trouble today, it seems to boil down to how long I "press the button" for.

Black Hole said:
Plays havoc with TV reception - not on the local TV/PVRs (which have the first point of call on the cable run) but further down the chain.
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This has gone away now I have abandoned HDMI.
 
Black Hole said:
Having obtained a VGA cable, I have ZEN hooked up to an Acer P193W which I believe is 1440x900 native. The trouble is I don't seem to be able to set the Mint desktop to the same res.

I've updated the video driver to the latest Nvidia, made sure DDC is enabled on the monitor (it's not obvious which is on and which off, but tried both), and the outcome has been more options in the display settings, but still not 1440x900.

Any clues?
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I have found a "solution" to this by web search, which involves manually adding a new display configuration to the descriptor file, and it's not simple. Really??
 
Black Hole said:
and it's not simple. Really??
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Are you really that naive? :rolleyes: :)
At times like this I recall a Swedish colleague who worked on the development side of the company scada software (which hung on Visual Basic); I was a 'user'. I had complained about something, and there was always something, and his reply with a Viking accent and a smile was "Who said it should be easy?"
It's been a crumb of comfort to me on many occasions :inlove:
 
Well, it strikes me that Windows handles this kind of thing perfectly OK, and if some flavour of Linux has any pretentions of being a main-stream alternative to Windows it will have to be capable of this kind of thing out-of-the-box without a user having to get their hands dirty under the bonnet. All I'm asking it to do is either recognise the monitor via the graphics board using DDC and adjust automatically, or (as a minimum) have all the normal screen resolutions + frequencies available to pick from a list in the display settings.

I seem to have three options: carry on as is (with a fuzzy image due to interpolation); try out the config detailed in the Linux Mint forum post (and risk some of the parameters not being suitable for my setup); ask for help on the LM forum to get a config crafted for my setup. I don't think any of these are very good, and it shouldn't be necessary.
 
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