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Shot swapping mice and keyboards COULD damage some systems - but most, if they booted with it connected, could be disconnected and readded.

Also why “no keyboard detected-press F1” - it wants you to connect a keyboard and then press F1.

You might be confusing it with COM port mice on DB-9 connectors. I seem to remember those had to be set up and the machine rebooted.

No, RS-232 (serial/COM/DE-9/DB-25) could be freely plugged and unplugged. PS/2 peripherals however always warned against hot-plugging [1]. The reboot you are remembering is because serial mice needed drivers installed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS/2_port#Hotplugging

Me, too. I got anxious when Mr. Rogers began to do the unthinkable. Surely he is not going to plug a ps/2 mice into a live PC, is he? And he did. Oh, so many memory of me crashing my PC whenever I did that, forgetting that the PC was powered on.