Avoid Problems with FireWire and "Hot-

Plugging"
By Craig Anderton
When FireWire (IEEE-1394)
connections first made the
scene, one of the claimed
advantages compared to the
squirrely SCSI protocol that
preceded it was that you could
'hot plug them - in other
words, while power was on to
a computer and peripheral, you
could unplug the FireWire
connection and plug it into a
different powered-on
peripheral. If you tried that
with SCSI, it was fryin' time
for sure.
But experience over the years
has shown that while you can
hot plug FireWire connections most of the time - maybe even 99% of the time - there are still
some situations where hot plugging can fry your computer`s motherboard, and possibly even
the peripheral you`re trying to connect to it. The main failure mode seems to involve
peripherals that grab power from the FireWire port; plugging them in can cause a momentary
power surge, as components like capacitors charge up and semiconductor devices switch on.
Although the odds of problems happening are remote, they can happen. Unless you want to
gamble on an expensive repair bill, observe the following rules:
Power down your computer and peripheral before connecting them via FireWire.
If the FireWire peripheral has an on-off switch (i.e., its own power supply), after making
the FireWire connection turn on the peripheral first, then turn on the computer, unless
the peripheral's instructions recommend otherwise.
Sure, it`s a little extra hassle to power down and power back up again. But if it saves your
motherboard, it's worth it.

Excerpted from Avoid Problems with FireWire and "Hot-Plugging" - Harmony Central
http://www.harmonycentral.com/t5/Technique-Articles/Avoid-Problems-with-FireWire-and-quot-Hot-Plugging-quot/ba-
p/34699329
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