Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2003 12:01:08 -0500 From: Brian Kelsay <bkelsay@comcast.net> Subject: Re: Never ceases to amaze Message-id: <004101c2fdf0$3b2d5440$0e00a8c0@burner>
About the only time I've tried Hot Plug is when I forget to plug in the
drive on a test system or slaving a drive with a dead/trashed Windows OS.
And i only try this when I'm just getting the memory count on boot.
Brian
----- Original Message -----
> What?! You mean you rebooted and passed up a perfectly good chance to
> play a game of hardware roulette?
>
> I remember hot swapping hard drives for about two years. Yes, I was
> rolling the dice and doing hardware changes in the fast lane. Finally I
> got to experience the even electronic engineers call "SCR latchup." Its
> when the voltage levels of the inputs are biased at the right place before
> the voltage supply rails come up and the silicon junctions simulate an SCR
> and clamp down on the supply, cooking the chip and possibly the
> motherboard.
>
> One fateful day, it happened. I noticed the drive I just plugged in
> wasn't readable. I took out the secondary IDE channel and it did
> something interesting two drives attatched to it. The motherboard could
> never use that channel again. Those two drives would work, but never with
> each other. But it did cost me a reboot. And an IDE channel.
>
> http://www.analog.com/library/analogDialogue/archives/35-05/latchup/
>
> --
> Programming C shells by the sea shore since 1994.
> http://dattaway.org
>