I just received some memory chips from an ebay seller. I have been looking for these for a long time and some finally showed up on ebay. The idiot packaged these TSOP chips down to a thin piece of corrugated cardboard and put them inside a normal plastic ziplock bag. This was then just placed inside a standard paper/bubble pack envelope and mailed to me. I really don't feel like desoldering the bad chips in my monitor and resolder these in place, which will take a couple of hours at least, only to find out they have been damaged.
I am waiting a response from the seller to see what he has to say about his stupidity. His policy is that the buyer ays shipping back on returned items. I say no way when he would obviously be the cause of any DOA part.
What do you people think?
P.S.
As I was posting this he replied
"If they are not working, I will resend another or refund you."
Now do I spend the 2 or more hours doing the chip swap and risk damaging the circuitboard for nothing?
I wouldn't be concerned about anything other than mechanical pin damage.
People who get all anal about ESD tend to forget what the D stands for. For an individual component, there isn't enough capacitance to ground for any significant discharge current to flow.
Just putting a chip in insulating, static-y material isn't going to do anything, as when you touch it, the insulation means there won't be any current flow.
In the early days of 4000 CMOS, it was common to see chips in poystyrene foam covered in foil in the misguided belief that the foil would protect against static . This is far worse than just bare polystyrene, as the foil provides a low-impedance discharge target, and significant capacitance to charge/discharge to.
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