27 Apr
2001
27 Apr
'01
10:30 a.m.
for you to see
(btw there ARE NO DISK LIGHTS on Suns, Vaxes
I think that rather depends on the Sun or the VAX (and how much hardware
hacking has been done to it ;-)). However, whatever the disk lights are
doing, you still don't turn off the power without shutting the machine
down properly. You're
being a bit clue< here.
Agreed.. This reminds me a bit of a thread we had a few years back about
static damage to chips and how some people don't bother to take
precautions and have never zapped a chip. Point is, the damage often
shows up months later. As it can be with filesystems. You may think
there's no problem, and one
day you either find an important file has been corrupted months earlier and
you didn't know about it, or that the last time you turned the machine
off without syncing you did some damage (for all it was OK the 100 times
before that).
Interesting point here. On a related note, if you use a Mac, it's in your
best interest to have a 3rd party disk check program and to check and
optimize your filesystems regularly. Trust me, I know that you're likely to
regret it if you don't! As much as I like Mac's I've got to admit the
Filesystem is to delicate.
You can swap
PC keyboards and mice hot until you happen
to blow the 5 volt fuse... and then you learn YOU AREN'T SUPPOSED TO.
I once pulled the Unibus memory card out of a running PDP11/45 -- with
the power on. I made a mistake. The system crashed of course (no memory....)
but no hardware damage was done.
Yes, I was lucky. This does not mean I make a habit of hot-swapping
Unibus boards (or anything else for that matter). I prefer to do things
properly, since I'm the poor person who'll have to sort out the mess
anyway...