Some of us, who have visited Tom Bent at home, are greeted by him in bare feet. He explains, “I am working on QL’s and I keep my feet bare to prevent static electricity.” I always thought, “Yeah, sure, don’t admit you’re hillbilly!”
Well Tom, you’re right, we do need to take precautions to prevent static. I learned the hard way. My QL is next to my clothes closet so I often dress next to it. One day I connected the computer to the power and then took out a pair of polyester trousers and pulled then on while standing next to the QL (I was bare-footed, on a rug, and not firmly touching the QL). Zap, the screen briefly turned white, then black – no more QL. Repowering the computer produced – nothing. On advice from Tom Bent I checked the ZX8301 and CPU chips by replacing them with good ones. Sure enough, the ZX8301 was bad, i. e., zapped! Tom suggested the motion of the fabric may have generated 20,000 volts!