Must the pc necessarily be turned off to connect /disconnect a serial camera?

[dennilfloss]

Ok. I know that USB devices are supposed to be hot swappable and parallel or serial devices are not. I recently was given a serial digital camera (Largan Lmini 350, 640x480) and it connects to the COM1 serial port via a RS232 cable. I intend to turn off my pc before connecting the 9-way D-type socket end of the RS232 cable into my COM1 serial port, and reboot to let W98 detect the camera for my first download (I already have the drivers and other software installed).

My question is do I need to do this procedure every time and must I unscrew the cable connector from the turned-off pc when I want to go and use my camera to take shots?

Can I instead leave the cable connected to the pc and simply unplug it from the camera RS232 jack socket?

Can the cable jack be removed from the camera socket while the pc is on or should it be turned off (also same question for reconnecting the camera to download pictures to the pc)?

I'm just trying to avoid unneeded reboots. Thanks for any help. 🙂

 

[Sunner]

You never need ro restart just cause you've plugged in a new device on the serial port.
They just arent hot swapable as in the OS wont automatically detect and attempt to install them, but they can be attached, and then installed manually no problem.
For instance, you can just plug a modem in at any time and install it, without any reboots.

 

[jinsonxu]

Well, i did do that with my old modem and mouse. They seem to work fine. But i wouldn't recommend it since there's a risk that it'll short out your ports. Opinions anyone?

 

[Sunner]

I've never heard of serial swaps shorting anything out, though I do know that could happen if you hot swapped PS2 mice, though that was some time ago, Ive never heard of it more recently.

 

[Doctorweir]

Well, head over here and decide for yourself to take the risk of no reboot:

Hotplug = exitus...

😉

 

[jonnyGURU]

I use an Olympus 340R Serial port camera and always leave the cable plugged in. I plug the camera into the cable and it is instantly found by Windows. The machine has not been reboot since December of 99.

As for "shorting out" the connector, this can be true for any device the gets it's 5V from the port, but a serial camera only uses 2 of the wires on a serial bus, and those wires are the Data + and Data -.

 

[dennilfloss]

I'm strongly leaning towards always shutting the PC off before inserting the cable jack into the camera. Now a few more opinions would be greatly appreciated. 🙂

In particular, I am leaning towards leaving tha cable attached to the pc even when it's not connected to the camera.

One further point, does it make a difference if the camera is turned on or off as I insert the jack into its socket? I am leaning towards having the camera off. This isn't specified in the instruction manual. 😕

Cheers all.

 

[PowerJoe]

Hot-plugable connectors
USB
Firewire (I think)
Serial
Parallel
Analog audio connectors (mini-pl, RCA)
Monitor (DB-15)
Telephone (RJ11)
Gameport/midi (I think)
Internal analog CD-audio
Internal front-panel LEDs

Not hot-plugable
power 🙂
PS/2 keyboard/mouse
AT keyboard
IDE
SCSI (?)
ISA, PCI, AGP, memory, processor

-PJ

 

[jonnyGURU]

Well flossie, although I think it would be a tad "extreme" to feel the need to shut the whole PC down to plug in a cable that is only data +/- to prevent shorting (can't think of the last time that ever happened), to answer your REVISED question; I do always plug my camera in with the camera off and then turn it on.

 

[dennilfloss]

Thanks jG & PJ too. 😀

 

[MWink]

PowerJoe: Scsi is hot plugable. Parallel is NOT hot plugable.

You mean to tell me that my CPU is not hot plugable?!?! 🙂

 

[boomerang]

I've got a Pronto programable remote control that interfaces with my PC through a serial port. I leave the cable screwed in to the back of the PC all the time. I plug and unplug the Pronto as often as I desire with the PC running. There is no on or off on the Pronto, it just goes into a sleep mode on it's own. I do "awaken" it before I download or upload to or from it.

No problems so far. Thought you might like to hear a real-world example.

 

[jonnyGURU]

MWink: I haven't had good luck "hot plugging" SCSI. For example, I have a UMAX 600S Legal scanner. It is plugged in through an adapter because I use a high end SCSI card instead of the cheapo 25 pin SCSI card that came with the scanner because I also have a SCSI burner and SCSI Zip.

Sometimes the cats get behind the desk and the adapter lets loose and I lose the scanner. I can plug it back in, but Windows will no longer access the scanner (even though it "sees" it) and I have to reboot.

I guess this is more of the software (Windows) not allowing the SCSI devices to be "hot pluggable". 🙁

 

[bozack]

never bother to tuen off machine before plugging in or unplugging parallel and com port/serial port peripherals

and at work sometimes ide cd roms and zip drives (however they wont work without a restart)

work on hundreds of machines and have never had any problems

 

[ERJ]

I have one semi-bad story in this line....

This was way back when so computers have probably advanced somewhat past this stage of zapability. I was 14 or so and decided to play a good ol' fashioned game of Flight Simulator 3. Grabbed my joystick and found it was not plugged in. Hmmmm.... Well, why bother rebooting the machine when I could just plug it in now? Needless to say, I ended up frying the game card (back when computers had seperate game and sound cards). Didn't make my dad too happy.

And that is my hot plug, fry story 😉

ERJ