> I would think that disconnecting a SCSI cable from a running system would
> be a really Bad Thing all around anyway. If you happen to pull it at
> an odd angle and your ground cables disconnect before the signal cables,
> you stand a good chance of introducting spikes and other transients into
> your system. Especially in the case of external devices like the ZIP drive,
> where the power supply for the ZIP drive is an isolated one (the chassy of
> the drive is allowed to 'float' at any voltage level if the grounding 
> cables are not connected).

There is a lot of SCSI hardware out there that is designed to be
hot-swapped.  (read that as, "I work with a lot of SCSI hardware that
is designed to be hot-swapped, every day."  8-)

However, as for hardware that hasn't been specially designed:

Certainly, it may not work for crappy PC cards, but i've never had it
_not_ work for me (well, except in once case where i blew a fuse on a
sparc motherboard 8-), and i've tried it on:
	aha1542's
	aha1742's
	bt74x's
	NCR 53c810's
	NCR 53c94's and other 53c9x and ESP-family chips
and probably a few other makes of SCSI hardware...

Hot swapping 'random' SCSI devices, if not in spec, is common enough
that it seems to work well, if there's adequate OS support.


chris