COMPUTER HARDWARE AND PROGRAMMING

• It is essential to maintain safe working conditions to prevent accidents and injury to any person or damage to any object in a work area.
• New staff and visitors must be informed of the appropriate safety procedures.
• Any transgression of the procedures must be reported.
• As a computer user or a technician, you should be aware of all possible dangers.
• A safe workspace is clean, organized, and well lit.
• Follow proper procedures for handling computer equipment.
• Failure to follow the prescribed safety procedures could result in fines, criminal convictions, damage to equipment, claims for damage from the owner of the property and data or injury.
• The proper disposal or recycling of hazardous computer components is a global issue.
• Make sure to follow regulations that govern how to dispose of specific items.
• When an organization violates these regulations, there can be legal consequences.
• Follow the basic safety guidelines to prevent cuts, burns, electrical shock, and damage to eyesight.
• As a best practice, make sure that a fire extinguisher and first aid kit are available in case of fire or injury.
• Remove your watch or any other jewelry and secure loose clothing before starting work.
• Turn off the power and unplug equipment before opening the case and performing service.
• Cover any sharp edges inside the computer case with tape.
• Never open a power supply or a monitor.
• Do not touch areas in printers that are hot or use high voltage.
• Know where the fire extinguisher is located and how to use it.
• Know where the first aid kit is located.
• Keep food and drinks out of your workspace.
• Keep your workspace clean and free of clutter.
• Lift heavy objects with your legs to avoid back injury.
• Mercury, commonly used in the manufacturing of batteries, is extremely toxic and harmful to humans.
• When disposing of batteries, monitors, and toner cartridges, comply with local environmental regulations.
• When handling motherboards, cards, or drives, don’t touch the chips on the device, hold expansion cards by the edges, and don’t touch any soldered components on a card, and don’t touch the edge connectors unless it’s absolutely necessary.
• Batteries from portable computer systems may contain lead, cadmium, lithium, alkaline manganese, and mercury, which do not decay and will remain in the environment for many years.
• In a classroom environment, after you have reassembled everything, have your instructor check your work before you put the cover back on and power up.
• The MSDS sheet contains chemical reactivity and incompatibilities information that includes spill, leak, and disposal procedures.
• To determine whether a material used in computer repairs or preventive maintenance is classified as hazardous, consult the manufacturer MSDS.
• Monitors and power supplies contain such very high voltages that you should not wear antistatic wrist straps when repairing them.
• In this part of the chapter, you learn how to take apart a desktop computer and put it back together, a skill needed in other chapters as you learn to add or replace computer parts inside the case and perhaps even build a system from scratch.
• The MSDS sheet also includes protective measures for the safe handling and storage of materials.
• Never ever touch the inside of a computer that is turned on, the exception to this rule is when you’re using a multimeter to measure voltage output.
• Before cleaning any device or repairing a computer, turn off the device and unplug it from the power source.
• Consider the monitor and the power supply to be “black boxes,” never remove the cover or put your hands inside this equipment unless you know about the hazards of charged capacitors and have been trained to deal with them.
• CRTs contain glass, metal, plastics, lead, barium, and rare earth metals, and may contain approximately 4 pounds (1.8 kg) of lead.
• To protect a microchip, don’t touch it with a magnetized screwdriver.
• The name of the material, the physical properties of the material, any hazardous ingredients the material contains, reactivity data such as fire and explosion data, spill or leak procedures, special precautions, health hazards, and special protection requirements can all be found within the MSDS.
• Knowing where to get help is crucial as a PC technician, and tools of the trade can be found in this chapter.
• Because computers use electricity to operate, a danger always exists when you are fixing a computer, therefore, certain steps need to be taken to ensure safety.