Hot Plugging PS/2 Ports?

RustyGT · December 21st, 2002, 05:38 AM

When I turned a hobby into a job* some years ago.

A senior Tech told me: Thou shalt not 'Hot Plug' PS/2 ports.

I beleive it was, upon pain of death, or crash of network, or some other indecipherable unbearable.

Whatever was most hurtful at the time, probably.

So the quiz is:
Shalt thy continue to hot plug PS2s? And,
What is the likely consequence?

I havent killed anything yet. But a little voice keeps saying NO!

R.

* I turned the job back into a hobby. I'm OK now. Honest!

RustyGT · December 21st, 2002, 06:01 AM

FYI: IBM introduced VGA, 1.44M 3.5 Floppies, and small format connectors for mouse and keyboard, with their PS/2 System, circa '87.
Hence the name, PS/2 connectors.
Cripes! Spam my own thread.

DutchMaster · December 21st, 2002, 06:21 AM

NO is not hotplugable.

Although I do it all the time, but only with the same mouse(switching between PCs). I recon if you connect another mousemodel, you might experience difficulties.

Its not hotplugable, because it doesn't switch drivers.
USB does, so thats hot plugable.

KraM · December 21st, 2002, 06:22 AM

I've heard some people say you can fry a mobo doing it.... never seen it myself

DutchMaster · December 21st, 2002, 06:24 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by KraM
I've heard some people say you can fry a mobo doing it.... never seen it myself

I guess since its drains power from the MoBo. A glitch may result in defective components. But then again I haven't heard or saw it before

TOAD6147 · December 21st, 2002, 06:58 AM

I found this here:

Quote:

Preventing the problem
Usually, the fuse is blown by hot plugging PS/2 devices. The PS/2 ports are not hot swappable; do not hot swap components on them. Usually the culprit device is the mouse, but I've seen keyboards damage the fuse too. With most PC BIOSes, the PS/2 mouse won't work anyway if hot-swapped.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Last edited on July 23, 2002 3:36 pm.

viztech · December 21st, 2002, 07:58 AM

I do it all the time with my headless DC cows, and haven't had an issue yet.

Some machines (Win95) won't bring the mouse back however.

viz

Richard Cranium · December 21st, 2002, 08:58 AM

The scoop is NO

I have smoked a sound card by hot "unplugging" however I just pulled it out a 1/16" inch until it did not contact, then stopped.

This may have put the outputs to ground and the long time span smoked the output amplifier circuit

USB is the only Hot-Plugable item AFAIK