> As someone else mentioned, there's a small amount of danger in
> hot-swapping *any* connection that isn't expliclty rated as hot-swapable.
> Example: on most Apple hardware for the last decade, keyboard and mouse
> (and other input devices) all hang off an "Apple Desktop Bus".
> Hot-swapping devices on this relatively simple bus can toast the ADB
> controller, rendering your machine "deaf" to keyboard and mouse events. Of
> course, six times out of ten, this probably won't happen, and everything
> will just work; and three times out of ten, your OS will hang, but no
> hardware will be roasted; but you'll really hate yourself if you happen to
> hit that one-in-ten that lets the Magic Smoke out, now, won't you :-)
>
> This is also true of simple serial connections, parallel connections,
> anything. If it doesn't say "hot swappable", it isn't, and while the
> danger may be small (I don't know if I've ever actually heard of anyone
> setting their machine on fire by hot-adding a modem to an RS-232 port,
> f'rinstance), it's there, nonetheless.
>
Well my friend's puter didn't exactly like a null-modem cable... after
plugging it in while the puter was on we had to cut the rs-232 outta the
motherboard to make the puter work again... and once one keyboard refused
to work when I plugged it in a puter... plugging it in another one and
then plugging it again on even another puter somehow made it work and it has
worked without noticeable problems since... lucky? ;)
So it the lesson is to avoid hot-plugging anything that doesn't have
"hot-pluggable" printed all around it? ;)