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I've always powered down machine to change out PS/2 peripherals. Is it necessary?

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  • I’ll add my own anecdotes (as a comment where it belongs, not as an answer ¬_¬). When I was in high-school, a friend was doing co-op in an office and related to me how he tried plugging in a PS/2 keyboard into an old computer and killed it (if I recall correctly, it was an IBM PS/1 and the motherboard died). In my own experience, I have unplugged and plugged in PS/2 keyboards and mice (sometimes unintentionally like with a bad PS/2 port or loose USB-PS/2 adapter) in my own systems (with newer components) without much trouble other than perhaps having to reboot to get it to start working.
    – Synetech
    Dec 7, 2013 at 16:38

6 Answers 6

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cite from wikipedia

Hotplugging

PS/2 ports are designed to connect the digital I/O lines of the microcontroller in the external device directly to the digital lines of the microcontroller on the motherboard. They are not designed to be hot swappable. Hot swapping PS/2 devices usually does not cause damage due to the fact that more modern microcontrollers tend to have more robust I/O lines built into them which are harder to damage than those of older controllers; however, hot swapping can still potentially cause damage on older machines, or machines with less robust port implementations.

If they are hotswapped, the devices must be similar enough that the driver running on the host system recognizes, and can be used with, the new device. Otherwise, the new device will not function properly. While this is seldom an issue with standard keyboard devices, the host system rarely recognizes the new device attached to the PS/2 mouse port. In practice most keyboards can be hotswapped but this should be avoided.

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    So the answer is.... maybe? Aug 5, 2010 at 15:41
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    You can, but I have seen certain systems completely lock up trying to hot swap a PS2 device.
    – Troggy
    Aug 5, 2010 at 16:07
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    +1: You can, but shouldn't do it. :) PS/2 devices are only detected during system POST, so they aren't PnP. That's why you almost always have to hard-reset the system when a new (or often even the same) PS/2 device is plugged in while the system is booted. Hardware wise, yeah there's a mild chance of corruption due to static or a little zap, but it's rare. I've hot-plugged keyboards 1000's of times in my life and never had it cause anything worse than a system lockup (which could cause data corruption). Aug 5, 2010 at 16:48
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    +1 @techie007 - that's exactly my experience. 99.9% of the time, especially with a keyboard, it works fine. But you shouldn't do it, because the 0.01% is a pain!
    – Shinrai
    Aug 6, 2010 at 14:26
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    What someone should do is come up with some sort of universal high speed serial bus where you can plug in all kinds of... wait a minute... Aug 8, 2010 at 18:52
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I worked as a computer technician for about 20 years and I can tell you that while damage is extremely rare, it does, on occasion, happen. In all that time I had to fix about 50 motherboards, there is a resistor that gets burnt out and you have to replace it. Combined that with the fact that all modern motherboards use surface mount resistors, and this can be a major pain. I highly recommend switching to a USB keyboard/mouse if you haven't already.

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I have actually blown the keyboard bios by plugging in a ps/2 keyboard while powered on. Yes, it was an older machine and I had to use USB keyboards from then on. Since then I've accidentally done it on occasion with other computers with no apparent harm. A couple of weeks ago (on a machine made around 2010) I did it and smelled something burning for a short time but everything still worked. If I were you I would avoid doing it all together.

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I'm unclear whether there is a possibility of hardware damage (I've never done any damage, and it's just a serial protocol, so I THINK it's safe hardware wise).

The problem that I've found is that when hot-swapping PS/2 devices, I often lose control. That is, I take one keyboard out, put the new one in, and it won't work until I reboot the device. I'm unclear whether this is an interface level problem (something gets out of sync in the protocol, or a resettable fuse trips somewhere), or whether it's a driver level problem (lost comms mid-packet and never re-syncs), but I know that swapping PS/2 keyboards is a very hit-or-miss proposition.

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I don't want to answer definitively, as I'm not a hardware expert, but I've swapped PS/2 mice and keyboards hundreds of times with the power on and never had a problem. One thing you may notice is that any custom settings for the keyboard may get reset; for instance, if you've increased the key repeat rate in the O/S settings, it will probably revert to the default.

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It is never a good idea, and with the advent of USB, it should never have to be done, although at the same time, with the advent of USB, I've seen it happen more. Why? Because people expect it to act like a PnP USB keyboard/mouse.

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    Can you expand upon your assertion that it's "never a good idea"? This post reads like a comment rather than an answer and doesn't seem to fully address the question.
    – bwDraco
    Oct 30, 2016 at 0:16

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