ESD for OSC1 & OSC2 pins ?

Sens-a-Dat

Has anyone used an ESD device attached to pins OSC1 & OSC2? Or is there a reason why one should not use such on these pins?

I am considering the use of NUP4201MR6,
www.onsemi.com/pub/Collateral/NUP4201MR6-D.PDF, to help protect these SX48 chip pins when one needs to change the resonator. I have had an experience in which the SX48 chip would no longer work with the 4MHz resonators (or any other oscillating device) and thus had to fallback on the internal timing circuit.

Thank you,
Gary

InSilico

I've never seen a circuit that uses an ESD device on the OSC pins, nor have I used an ESD device on the OSC pins on my SX projects. I've changed out the resonator on the SX Tech Boards and my "homebrew" boards many, many times and have yet to see my SX fail.

If you think ESD is responsible for the damage, then the best way to prevent it from happening again·is to discharge yourself of static electricity before handling them. This is generally true for all the pins on all ICs, since the actual silicon is very small. That's why Parallax ships just about everything with silicon in it in an anti-static bag.

I would say that the ESD device is not necessary. Whether the addition of the ESD device will affect the timing circuitry in the SX is something I don't know since I don't have a NUP4201MR6 to test it out.

Hope this helps!