Can you damage a motherboard by hot swapping a PS2 mouse or keyboard?

[Macro2]

I saw this as a question somewhere and wondered about it. If true what knid of damage can you do?

 

[Bovinicus]

I very highly doubt anything would go wrong because of this. Most likely the mouse cursor would stop responding, and that is about it. Sometimes computers are quirky, but I wouldn't worry about it.

 

[Lord Evermore]

Need to read up before suggesting things you're not sure of. There's a fuse on PS/2 ports. You can damage both the motherboard and the device you're unplugging. There's a chance it could be okay, but there's a greater chance of frying them.

 

[RobCur]

yes there is some voltage + and -, that by unplugging and plugging them will cause things to spark up and then you will either fry up your mouse/keyboard or the port is dead causing you to RMA the whole thing... it suggested to turn off your computer, unless it's USB...maybe you should try that with harddrive, VGA, sound card as well just to see if it will work?? bahahaha! good luck.

 

[Sunner]

In theory, you can fry your mobo, in practice I've seen that happen like once or twice when I worked in the support dept of a mid sized OEM.
Haven't seen this happen, or even heard about it happening with any semi-modern computer though, so I don't worry about it much.

 

[sandorski]

Don't do it! USB, Firewire, and some other more recent Hot Swapping technologies are specifically designed to be able to do this kind of thing, but Parallel, Serial, and other Legacy devices were not, so everytime you do this with a Legacy device you are flirting with frying something.

 

[EdipisReks]

i've plugged and unplugged PS2 mice and keyboards dozens of times, and i've never had a problem. however, since i also overclock every computer i own, i guess i'm a risk taker at heart.

 

[prosaic]

I would like to just add a little additional information for consideration. While it's true that many people hot-plug PS2 mice and keyboards on a fairly regular basis without seeing smoke issue from the motherboard, it is also true that they may be causing damage to their systems. Not all damage from this sort of excursion gives evidence of itself by frank failure of the system board. Sometimes you just wind up with operational glitches that may seem unrelated. It is certain that most PS2 ports are not designed to tolerate frequent hot-plugging. I'm also certain that there are systems that are robust enough to handle abuse of this type in stride. But I don't choose to take the risk.

The behavior that annoys me is the risk-taking of this sort that techs take on other people's computers. They often figure that no harm is done, despite the fact that they should know better, because nothing catastrophic happens. They do their damage, then ship the PC back to the customer who has to live with the glitches. Not good.

- prosaic

PS: You can also kill some mice by hot-plugging them. Haven't seen a keyboard whacked this way, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it was possible.

 

[LED]

The key word here is can and the answer is YES...some serial ports are ok...I've personally never seen the MoBo fry but have seen a few ports go out in my time.

Edit=prosaic makes a very good point !

 

[arcenite]

I don't usually do it on purpose, but when I do (not thinking) it usually doesn't cause any problems except maybe a freeze or mouse stops moving. Nothing fatal.

Bill

 

[smp]

I have two motherbaords (an A7V and a P2B) in my house that have dead PS2 ports as a result of hot plugging.

edit: They are still in commission thanks to USB perepherals

 

[RustyNale]

YES, you can do damage. I accidentally unplugged my ps2 mouse from my Abit mobo and after plugging it in discovered that it no longer worked. I ended up having to use a serial mouse that I had laying around. Now whenever I work on my comp or someone else's I shut the comp down, pull the power cord, then pull the mouse, keyboard, or what ever needs removing. Today's mobo still have current running through them even though it's shut down, you have to pull the plug to totally shut them down. (sorta like a tv, you turn it off with the remote but there's still current active in it)

 

[prosaic]

OT

RustyNale,

That sig quote is priceless!

- prosaic

 

[Brian48]

Yep. I agree. Never hot plug a PS2 device. A lot of folks have gotten away with doing it, but that's just like me saying it's safe to run through a hail of bullets because I've done it a few times and came out without a stratch.

 

[kranky]

I've done it hundreds of times, and then I blew up the mobo on my home PC when I was plugging in a PS/2 keyboard when the system was on. Now I don't do that any more.

 

[sniperruff]

that reminds me of a personal experience:

i once tripped the keyboard cord (which is under the desk) on my old computer. it has 2 sticks of old 16mb SDRAM on it. after i tripped it the computer restarted. then on the memory check it showed up as only 16mb is present, and would freeze on BIOS startup.

then i switched the ram to different slots and it worked. hmmm the wonders of a motherboard...

so that experience have told me that it should be bad.

 

[Mem]

I would advise against doing it with PS/2,the only safe hot swapping device is USB since that`s designed for hot swapping etc.

 

[johto]

i do it all the time. with win2k/xp as long as a mouse/kb was plugged in when it booted you can add/remove with no problem.

 

[Whitedog]

I've smoke checked one mobo myself and seen two other go "poof" from swapping PS2 Keyboards out. This is of course here at work. It's kinda a pain to tell a user to shut the PC down to swap out the device. They are covered under Dell warranty so if we do blow one up, we don't care.

It's a gamble and I wouldn't do it with my own personnal gear.

 

[kranky]

Originally posted by: johto
i do it all the time. with win2k/xp as long as a mouse/kb was plugged in when it booted you can add/remove with no problem.

Um, I wouldn't credit Win2K or XP with magic powers to protect your PC from this problem. I used to do it "all the time" too, until I fried my PC.

 

[ArmchairAthlete]

I've removed the PS2 keyboard while my PC was on plenty of times. Nothing happens, you just can't type. Maybe I'll stop doing that though (I rarely ever did). Didn't know it could hurt your PC like that.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: Lord Evermore
Need to read up before suggesting things you're not sure of. There's a fuse on PS/2 ports. You can damage both the motherboard and the device you're unplugging. There's a chance it could be okay, but there's a greater chance of frying them.

I have already killed a PS/2 port by hot-plugging a mouse into it. As someone said here, newer stuff like USB and Firewire is hot-swap, not the legacy ports. And might I say, ever since I started using USB, I'll be glad to see legacy ports go away.