This is best learned from somone elses experience

[Maximilian]

See those little lines all over the motherboard? Suppose they can be classed as wires of some sort, what happens if you touch them while the comp is turned on?? Shock & die? Break comp? Both?

Also what happens if you plug somthing into the pci slot while the comp is on and booted into windows. You're wearing rubber gloves for this one so no shocks. Will windows crash? or what? Plug and play for pci kicks in?

 

[OBCT]

The "little lines" are circuit traces, which channel electricity throughout the system. If you touch them with something non-conductive, then nothing would happen. With something metallic, I don't know. Probably not a good idea to begin with.

Plug and play for PCI? No, always shut down and unplug your computer before installing new hardware.

 

[PsYcHoCoW]

touching the copper traces with your fingers wouldn't give you a shock as the signals are low voltage. I doubt that it would cause problems, if it does it would be because of your body's capacity...

as for plugging something in the PCI slot while the computer is running : a client where I work "tried" it... it broke the network card, but the PC was fine and didn't lock up...

 

[Aluvus]

Originally posted by: Soviet
See those little lines all over the motherboard? Suppose they can be classed as wires of some sort, what happens if you touch them while the comp is turned on?? Shock & die? Break comp? Both?

Usually nothing, because they have an insulative layer over them.

Also what happens if you plug somthing into the pci slot while the comp is on and booted into windows. You're wearing rubber gloves for this one so no shocks. Will windows crash? or what? Plug and play for pci kicks in?

You'll probably torch the card.

 

[Maximilian]

Sweet.... thats good to know. Thanks guys.

 

[Lord Evermore]

By now I'm guessing Soviet is lying on the floor, dead or dying, with a screwdriver fused to his hand.

 

[Cynicist]

lol, btw there are such things as hot swappable pci cards and sata drives. So its possible to plug something in while the computer is running and have it work but I dont like the idea myself.

 

[Lord Evermore]

Normal PCI slots on consumer mainboards, and consumer PCI cards, are not hot-swap/hot-plug capable. Technically there appears to be a feature in the PCI 2.2 spec for it, but it's easier to just tell people it's not possible, since it's rare that they'd ever run into it, and safer not to have them trying it. If anybody actually had a device that was PCI hot-swap/hot-plug capable, they'd know it because they bought it specifically with that in mind.

SATA drives are hot-pluggable, by definition, as part of the specification. Of course usually you don't go around pulling your hard drives out, any more than you pull live PCI cards out.

 

[grooge]

Originally posted by: Lord Evermore

SATA drives are hot-pluggable, by definition, as part of the specification. Of course usually you don't go around pulling your hard drives out, any more than you pull live PCI cards out.

It is part of the specification, but the controller MUST support this feature as well as driver should allow this feature.

nforce4 chipset, ie, is hot swappable, but installed with normal microsoft drivers, you cannot hotswap the drive. Using nvidia IDE drivers, then this feature is enabled. The little icon "Safely remove device" should be in the lower right corner of the screen and used to allow this operation to be safely performed. Not just opening the side panel and unplugging the hdd ...

 

[Peter]

Originally posted by: Lord Evermore
Normal PCI slots on consumer mainboards, and consumer PCI cards, are not hot-swap/hot-plug capable. Technically there appears to be a feature in the PCI 2.2 spec for it, but it's easier to just tell people it's not possible, since it's rare that they'd ever run into it, and safer not to have them trying it. If anybody actually had a device that was PCI hot-swap/hot-plug capable, they'd know it because they bought it specifically with that in mind.

PCI _cards_ are not hot pluggable at all, ever. The capability is on the mainboard side.

Essentially, hot-plug capable mainboards bring a control button and separate power logic to every slot, so that the card in the slot can be powered down all separately, and the new card inserted, before pushing the button again to fire the slot back up.

 

[w00t]

lol, you thought you would die if you touched the motherboard on it's circuits good stuff.