Do I have to attend the electrostatic loading and ground potential differences?
Yes. Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) can damage a sensitive electronic component.
Under several conditions static electricity and ground potential differences between the UAD and the user's target hardware can build up high voltages - over 10000 Volts (10 kV) in some cases. The electrostatic discharge of this build-up voltage results in fast high current waveforms and fast magnetic (H-field) or electrostatic (E-field) disturbances.
The discharge into the electronic components and circuitry can damage or destroy hardware components, resulting in failures and reduced reliability. Because of the non-hot-pluggable 3.3 Volts / 5 Volts - TTL properties of the JTAG and the 3Pin/Serial connectors, these ports are endangered especially. The maximum voltage on these pins may not exceeded 5.5 Volts against the UADs ground, especially in the case that the ground planes are not connected first.
To protect your hardware against damage from static electricity and ground potential discharge, you must follow some basic precautions:
- Before you change any cable connections from the UAD, please remove the power from the UAD and your target system.
- Please ensure that the static electricity and ground potentials between the UAD, the host PC and the target hardware are balanced. If there is a danger of high potential differences, you must connect the UAD, the host PC and the target hardware to the same ground domain via a low resistance connection.
- Establish the target connection and power on the systems.
In all cases, the following rule must be attended:
The first connection between the devices must be done via the ground !
Solution
All UADs are equipped with a ground socket on the front side. Please use this ground socket for discharging the static electricity and balancing ground potentials between the UAD, the host PC and the target hardware BEFORE you connect the target hardware to the UAD.
An additional protection for UAD can be achieved by using the JTAG Protector. In hard process environments it is strongly recommended to use the UAD-JTAG-Protector. The UAD2pro, UAD2+ and UAD3+ contain the protection function already. Please note, that the JTAG Protector DOES NOT suspend the precautions described above.
