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Here be dragons: Preventing static damage, latchup, and metastability in the 386

I've been reverse-engineering the Intel 386 processor (from 1985), and I've come across some interesting circuits for the chip's input/outpu...

Since these pins communicate with the outside world, they face special dangers: static electricity and latchup can destroy the chip, while metastability can cause serious malfunctions. Intel recommends an anti-static mat and a grounding wrist strap when installing a processor to avoid the danger of static electricity, also known as Electrostatic Discharge or ESD. For instance, a processor receives interrupt signals when an I/O device has data, but the timing is unpredictable because it depends on mechanical factors such as a keypress or a spinning floppy disk.

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