pulling out a PCI card while PC is on

xboxist

Diamond Member
Jun 25, 2002
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Hmmm... good question - not sure. It was always drilled into my skull to not touch internal components while the computer was on. So yeah, no idea.
 

dman

Diamond Member
Nov 2, 1999
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Would depend on the card, mb, OS, etc. In general it's not a good idea. Taking one out wouldn't be as bad as putting one in... imo.
 

brnbngls

Senior member
Feb 12, 2001
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I knew a girl in college who plugged in a CD Burner while the PC was running. Internal burner mind you, IDE. Suffice to say the PC never worked properly again. Wouldn't detect IDE devices after that.

So my general advice is no touchy
 

aceO07

Diamond Member
Nov 6, 2000
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I've tried plugging a cable into a card while it was in the computer before. Bad Idea. There was a burnt smell afterwards and goodbye card.
 

MrDudeMan

Lifer
Jan 15, 2001
15,069
94
91
Originally posted by: SagaLore
You'll permanently damage the motherboard and/or card.

this is more than likely what will happen

if you could somehow manage to pull it out exactly even, it might not hurt it, but i dunno. even then it may still FUBAR it because the mobo is sending it signals and voltage.

dont do it
 

vi edit

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Oct 28, 1999
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Wasn't Win2k *supposed* to have the ability to shut down the power to PCI slots so that you could do hot swaps?

Whatever came of that?
 

FelixDeCat

Lifer
Aug 4, 2000
30,544
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Well, if what I saw happened when someone didnt fully remove a ram stick all the way - you could short out the board and cause the power supply to burn, the pci component gold contacts to burn and the motherboard connecter to melt and burn as well.

Been there, done that. :(
 

MrDudeMan

Lifer
Jan 15, 2001
15,069
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Originally posted by: FelixDeKat
Well, if what I saw happened when someone didnt fully remove a ram stick all the way - you could short out the board and cause the power supply to burn, the pci component gold contacts to burn and the motherboard connecter to melt and burn as well.

Been there, done that. :(

yeah well the same thing happens if you force a stick of ram in the wrong way...been there, done that. :(

in my defense, i was being rushed and the ram never fight right to begin with...so you had to force it everytime. well, i forced it the wrong way this one time and took down many of its companions in the process.
 

Woodchuck2000

Golden Member
Jan 20, 2002
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Originally posted by: vi_edit
Wasn't Win2k *supposed* to have the ability to shut down the power to PCI slots so that you could do hot swaps?

Whatever came of that?
It's entirely capable of doing so... As long as your motherboard supports it. And you won't find support for hot-swap PCI outside of high-end server boards.

 

Viper GTS

Lifer
Oct 13, 1999
38,107
433
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Originally posted by: vi_edit
Wasn't Win2k *supposed* to have the ability to shut down the power to PCI slots so that you could do hot swaps?

Whatever came of that?

Hot swappable PCI is commonplace in servers, as are hot swappable CPUs.

Viper GTS
 

Turkish

Lifer
May 26, 2003
15,547
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Originally posted by: Viper GTS
Originally posted by: vi_edit
Wasn't Win2k *supposed* to have the ability to shut down the power to PCI slots so that you could do hot swaps?

Whatever came of that?

Hot swappable PCI is commonplace in servers, as are hot swappable CPUs.

Viper GTS

you can hot swap CPUs? :Q
 

NogginBoink

Diamond Member
Feb 17, 2002
5,322
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Originally posted by: Xiety
Originally posted by: Viper GTS
Originally posted by: vi_edit
Wasn't Win2k *supposed* to have the ability to shut down the power to PCI slots so that you could do hot swaps?

Whatever came of that?

Hot swappable PCI is commonplace in servers, as are hot swappable CPUs.

Viper GTS

you can hot swap CPUs? :Q

Not on any Microsoft operating system.

However, you can hot-add RAM on W2K Datacenter Edition. (Of course, provided your motherboard supports it.)
 

OffTopic1

Golden Member
Feb 12, 2004
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You can hot swap PCI/IDE/SCSI devices even on non hot swap able mobo, and doing so is risking your hardware. I have hot swaped solid state dims disk-on-chip, bios, pci vid cards, pci/isa sounds, pci/isa network cards, pci/isa modems, IDE/SCSI hdds & floppies.

The thruth is that is doesn't make my dick any longer because I can do so, and it has killed 1 bios & 1 disk-on-chip out of the dozens of experiments that I did.

I have only proven that hot swap can be done on my own machine a few times to prove to my friends that it is possible, however the devices doesn't work or crash the computer & require a cold boot.

The experiments was done at my old job where I build imbedded firewall system. We sometime would rip apart pix & other systems to see what they use for hardware & hack their OS for comparison to our system & to see what the competitions have. Therefore we have lots of parts to play with when we are bored.

Strange thing that I found in my experiment is that unpluging & replug the same IDE HDD on a computer while it is on doesn't crash the system most of the times. However, floppy drives sometime works & sometime don't. And, all other devices require cold boot inorder for the computer to work. Linux & Unix is much more tolerable with IDE devices than Windows, because you can unmount & remount the system during a swap.

On a related note. CISCO hardware is absolutely crap for hardware because they use mostly Celeron & Pentium processors that required heat sink & a moving fan for cooling, however their proprietor OS is pretty good. As for my old company, they use none moving parts with a CPU that draw only 1.2~2W & a beautiful Linux kernel.
 

nageov3t

Lifer
Feb 18, 2004
42,808
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I've done it a couple times. once on a Linux system, and the system kept running. another time on a Windows box; the box locked up, but was perfectly fine after a reboot.
 

NogginBoink

Diamond Member
Feb 17, 2002
5,322
0
0
Originally posted by: OffTopic
You can hot swap PCI/IDE/SCSI devices even on non hot swap able mobo, and doing so is risking your hardware. I have hot swaped solid state dims disk-on-chip, bios, pci vid cards, pci/isa sounds, pci/isa network cards, pci/isa modems, IDE/SCSI hdds & floppies.

The thruth is that is doesn't make my dick any longer because I can do so, and it has killed 1 bios & 1 disk-on-chip out of the dozens of experiments that I did.

I have only proven that hot swap can be done on my own machine a few times to prove to my friends that it is possible, however the devices doesn't work or crash the computer & require a cold boot.

The experiments was at done at my old job where I build imbedded firewall system. We sometime would rip apart pix & other systems to see what they use for hardware & hack their OS for comparison to our system & to see what the competitions have. Therefore we have lots of parts to play with when we are bored.

Strange thing that I found in my experiment is that unpluging & replug the same IDE HDD on a computer while it is on doesn't crash the system most of the times. However, floppy drives sometime works & sometime don't. And, all other devices require cold boot inorder for the computer to work. Linux & Unix is much more tolerable with IDE devices than Windows, because you can unmount & remount the system during a swap.

On a related note. CISCO hardware is absolutely crap for hardware because they use mostly Celeron & Pentium processors that required heat sink & a moving fan for cooling, however their proprietor OS is pretty good. As for my old company, they use none moving parts with a CPU that draw only 1.2~2W & a beautiful Linux kernel.

SCSI disks can (in general) be hot-plugged and rescanned by W2K and work. Special hot-plug sleds are designed so that the power pins make contact before the data pins, but that's the only thing 'special' about hot plug scsi cages.

PCI cards can be hot-plugged on hardware that supports the feature and used by W2K without a reboot.

RAM can be hot-added on hardware that supports it with W2K3 and Windows can use it.

USB and Firewire are no brainers.

Hotplugging anything else should only be done with disposable hardware. :)
 

NogginBoink

Diamond Member
Feb 17, 2002
5,322
0
0
To answer the original question: you'd probably get an NMI bluescreen if you hot-yanked a pci card.