> 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).

In my experience, you can often get away with unplugging/pugging hot
SCSI disks/tapes/CD-ROM drives etc, especially if the SCSI bus is
quiescent, but it *is* possible to cause permanent damage - I toasted a
Sun 4/65 motherboard once that way 8-(

-- 
Scott Telford, Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre,        <s.telford@ed.ac.uk>
University of Edinburgh, Mayfield Rd, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK.(+44 131 650 5978)
 "Is it a virus, a drug, or a religion?" "What's the difference?" (Snow Crash)