I once plugged in an ISA card into a powered on PC running Windows.

The plug and play card was detected and I driver got installed (or started to, not sure if it completed ).

Yeah you can unplug them while its powered up, the problem comes in the way you do it, if you pull it vertically up then no problem, there might be problems if the gold fingers of the contact edge short out other fingers...
The machine will just hang waiting for a response from the card.

PCI-X was hot swappable but carried the same cross contact problems.

Never deliberately removed a card while the computer was on, but I did have a Roland SCC-1 lose contact with the ISA pins while probing it with an oscilloscope.

Caused the system to lock up and then required a restart.

I don't think that it is a great idea to do that, most of them don't support hotplugging.

Back in ~2000 I was working in a computer store, installing a PCI sound card in a PC. I was talking to a coworker and distracted. I inserted the PCI sound card in the machine while it was powered on!

To my great surprise, windows proceeded to plug n play the card and install the driver!

I know of a friend who pulled inserted (memory correction 🤣) an ISA modem while the power was on and it fried the board, but ISA pinouts are diff than PCI. Never done that myself but have come soo close a few times....

I've never pulled one out hot, but I bumped an SB Live on my testbench and it obviously caused a connection interruption and locked up Windows 98 (although, let's be real--Windows 98's natural state is locked up, so I was just leading it to the end faster than usual). There was no damage.

smtkr wrote on 2023-11-02, 01:56:

Windows 98's natural state is locked up

What a great quote, I'm putting that in my signature. 😄

Believe it or not, I never pulled out or plugged in a card when a system was live. But I have an Audigy 2 that's very temperamental when inserted at a slight angle into a PCI slot. It's just not being detected at all.

Don't know if there's a micro crack on the PCB / a loose solder joint or something, but I've always been able to solve the problem by just unscrewing it, wiggling it around a bit and screwing it back in. Problem solved!...I guess.

schmatzler wrote on 2023-11-02, 02:46:

What a great quote, I'm putting that in my signature. 😄 […]
Show full quote

smtkr wrote on 2023-11-02, 01:56:

Windows 98's natural state is locked up

What a great quote, I'm putting that in my signature. 😄

Believe it or not, I never pulled out or plugged in a card when a system was live. But I have an Audigy 2 that's very temperamental when inserted at a slight angle into a PCI slot. It's just not being detected at all.

Don't know if there's a micro crack on the PCB / a loose solder joint or something, but I've always been able to solve the problem by just unscrewing it, wiggling it around a bit and screwing it back in. Problem solved!...I guess.

That sounds more like a problem with contact fitment in the PCI slot. PCI cards are 1.6mm thick and don't really flex much unless you go full gorilla on them.

smtkr wrote on 2023-11-02, 01:56:

I've never pulled one out hot, but I bumped an SB Live on my testbench and it obviously caused a connection interruption and locked up Windows 98 (although, let's be real--Windows 98's natural state is locked up, so I was just leading it to the end faster than usual). There was no damage.

Thats either very sophisticated way of looking at it or very cynical. Not knowing you as a person its hard to know which Heheh.

kingcake wrote on 2023-11-02, 03:02:

schmatzler wrote on 2023-11-02, 02:46:

What a great quote, I'm putting that in my signature. 😄 […]
Show full quote

smtkr wrote on 2023-11-02, 01:56:

Windows 98's natural state is locked up

What a great quote, I'm putting that in my signature. 😄

Believe it or not, I never pulled out or plugged in a card when a system was live. But I have an Audigy 2 that's very temperamental when inserted at a slight angle into a PCI slot. It's just not being detected at all.

Don't know if there's a micro crack on the PCB / a loose solder joint or something, but I've always been able to solve the problem by just unscrewing it, wiggling it around a bit and screwing it back in. Problem solved!...I guess.

That sounds more like a problem with contact fitment in the PCI slot. PCI cards are 1.6mm thick and don't really flex much unless you go full gorilla on them.

I remember reading in the manual for some addon card where they explained that some slots are very tight and may require force for insertion, and also that you would not be able to damage the card during installation by pressing too hard. I think it even stated that if you managed to somehow break the card in this way that they would replace it for you.

I happen to agree with this sentiment. I would take a tremendous force to break a PCI or ISA card on insertion. The only way would be if you tried to bend it in half, but that's not the direction where force is applied when pressing it into the slot.

When the term Plug-and-Play came out, this was exactly how I understood it. You can put any card into the PC while Windows is running, and you can use it right away...
Then I was disappointed when I read about it further in one of those Computer Gaming World magazines, and I didn't really understand the idea of not having to toy with jumpers anymore. By that time I never had to play with jumpers, and used all cards at their factory settings.

I don't mind using jumpers nowadays, but this comes with the benefit of modern Internet, PDF manuals, forums, and asking questions from fellow retro enthusiasts. I imagine that it must have been quite different back in the day.

I didn't understand IRQs and DMAs as a kid. I just tried every sound option until something came out of my speakers. I always wished I had a Sound Blaster 16, since that seemed to be the most common option. Years later when I gutted my childhood machine, I found out that there was a Sound Blaster 16 in it all along. I didn't even know what was in my own computer.

I just did it again... this time I yanked the video card. I didn't realize the power was still on, because the screen was in sleep mode.

Everything survived, which is both impressive and somewhat distressing that I have done this twice now.

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-11-03, 03:42:

I just did it again... this time I yanked the video card. I didn't realize the power was still on, because the screen was in sleep mode.

Everything survived, which is both impressive and somewhat distressing that I have done this twice now.

Perhaps it's time to stop doing that

There were some HP servers that allowed you to hot plug PCI-X cards and RAM modules. I think this has been discontinued though.

Errius wrote on 2023-11-03, 16:54:

There were some HP servers that allowed you to hot plug PCI-X cards and RAM modules. I think this has been discontinued though.

I think they such a thing would still need to alert the system ahead of time for it to put the slot into a "ready" state for that kind of card edge, I think. Did it really allow hot plugging any time?

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-11-03, 18:11:

Errius wrote on 2023-11-03, 16:54:

There were some HP servers that allowed you to hot plug PCI-X cards and RAM modules. I think this has been discontinued though.

I think they such a thing would still need to alert the system ahead of time for it to put the slot into a "ready" state for that kind of card edge, I think. Did it really allow hot plugging any time?

The slots had to be powered down for adding/removing cards.

Page 113 starting at 5.5.8 describes how this worked.
https://www.intel.com/content/dam/support/us/ … s_r12_final.pdf

Last time I did this was in my childhood, I connected a SID card into my Videoton TVC while it was on. It didn't work then and I was scared witless. Thankfully a power cycle brought it to life.