[sdiy] Storing ICs (and static sensitivity) - how much toworry?

[Paul Perry]

I keep any chips that I buy new, in their original packaging.

I don't have many chips that aren't in the original packaging, but those
that I do have, I put in the black antistatic foam that you can buy from
anyone.

It is a bad mistake to put a chip back into the original packaging after
taking it out for any reason. Because, what if something has happened to it
while it was out? Nothing worse than prototyping with a faulty chip.
Enormous waste of time, hopeless confusion, unhappiness etc.
Same as putting a resistor back in the tray it came from. Easy to put a 1K
in a 10K drawer & ruin a day sometime in the future.

Some people keep tubes that they have bought chips in & put all their
'second hand' and salvaged chips in those. Nothing wrong with that, of
course.

Fortunately I'm in an unheated house in Melbourne Victoria & even with the
drought, it's humid enough here not to have a problem.

paul perry Melbourne Australia