From: nospam@needed.invalid   
      
   On Sat, 3/15/2025 2:22 PM, R.Wieser wrote:   
   > Paul,   
   >   
   >> And that's why, if you look at the design of hot-plug   
   >> devices, you will notice some contacts are longer than   
   >> others and this is intended to make them "touch first"   
   >> on insertion.   
   >   
   > I know, you know, and most likely others do too.   
   >   
   > And its the reason why you don't try to hot-plug a PATA drive. :-)   
   >   
   > Regards,   
   > Rudy Wieser   
   >   
   >   
      
   You *can* hot plug a ribbon cable drive.   
      
   You need the right kind of housing with the   
   right kind of connectors on either side, to do it.   
   It can only be done safely, by using a housed drive,   
   that slides into a special tray. The special tray   
   goes to the end-connector on the IDE ribbon (jumpered Master)   
   and the special tray stays attached to that cable   
   all the time. The IDE housed drive, slides in or out   
   of the tray. There is a little ceremony, during removal.   
      
   This was not a popular activity at the time,   
   and you may have a lot of trouble finding   
   a Google image of the items in question.   
      
   This article kinda hints at the detail.   
      
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_ATA   
      
      "Although CF can be hot-pluggable with additional design methods,   
       by default when wired directly to an ATA interface, it is   
       not intended to be hot-pluggable."   
      
   It's the same for the PATA drive. The ribbon cable, considered by itself,   
   is as the spec summary at the top says:   
      
      General specifications   
      
      Hot pluggable        No   
      
   But, by means of redesigning the connectors that mate between the   
   housing that slides in and out, and the tray it rests in, it   
   can be made hot-plug compatible.   
      
   I had *absolutely no interest* in testing this, and did not   
   buy samples of the housing as a result :-) It's like a bar bet,   
   doing stuff like this. But a commercial interest, did sell   
   housings to do this very thing. Even at the time these were for   
   sale, the documentation was very poor. You could hardly   
   tell what they were doing, at the interface level.   
      
      Paul   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)