[lug] NIC fact/fiction

[Anders Knudsen]

At 11:24 AM 8/4/00 -0700, tried a go at sarcasm:
>One should never, repeat never, plug in or unplug a cable with an electronic
>system turned on.  John

True for serial ports, PS/2, old AT keyboard, Mac ADB, SCSI.
All new I/Os are being designed (or have been designed) to be hot pluggable.
As for network cables/cards. No way, no how can the card self destruct 
solely because you don't have a cable attached. Also, with NICs you can 
plug/unplug with the power on, no problemo. From an ESD standpoint, it is 
typically not a factor. All ASICs are designed with major ESD protection on 
their inputs, so you can't easily fry them (this does not mean you can hold 
a steady state high V on them tho ;-)
Plug and unplug, power or no power, no diff.

-Anders.

>----- Original Message -----
>From: Brian Jarrett <BrianJ at storagesoft.com>
>To: <lug at lug.boulder.co.us>
>Sent: Friday, August 04, 2000 8:31 AM
>Subject: RE: [lug] NIC fact/fiction
>
>
> > I've never heard of this phenomenon and I disconnect cables from NICs all
> > the time on our networks.  The machine itself won't harm the NIC if a
>cable
> > is not plugged in.
> >
> > My guess is that someone observed the effect of having a NIC burned out
> > without understanding the true cause of the problem.  They probably
> > disconnected the cable and then found that the NIC didn't work, but a
>power
> > surge or something else could've caused it.  The only other thing that
> > _might_ be a possibility is if, when disconnecting the cable, someone
>caused
> > ESD damage to the NIC by grounding out to it.
> >
> > Brian
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: matthew.w.mcillece at lmco.com [mailto:matthew.w.mcillece at lmco.com]
> > Sent: Friday, August 04, 2000 9:00 AM
> > To: clue-tech at clue.denver.co.us; lug at lug.boulder.co.us
> > Subject: [lug] NIC fact/fiction
> >
> >
> > Has anyone ever heard of a network card "burning out" from being
> > disconnected from the ethernet for an extended period?  It seems silly to
>me
> > because I had my network card powered up in my box for months before I had
> > anything to connect it to and it still works fine.  But I heard second
>hand
> > that if you disconnect the ethernet cable while the machine is powered up
> > that it will burn out the network card.
> >
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