[JohnFen]

> Stuff has gotten a lot more robust

It has, yes.

But even back when things weren't as robust, I never got into the habit of using a wrist strap. Just remembering to touch something grounded before poking at things seems to have done the trick. I don't think I ever fried a device through ESD.

[analog31]

I sometimes ground my chair through a 1-meg resistor when I'm feeling zaps during dry winter months. Also, run some copper tape along front edge of workbench, through 1-meg to ground, as a place to conveniently touch.

My bout with damaged chips was when I was programming early EPROM microcontrollers, and a zapped chip bore a strong resemblance to a firmware bug, so it was a frustrating time until I discovered the actual cause.