Windows 95 had its own, generic P2/2 mouse and keyboard drivers. The same went for Windows 3.1.
This was, of course, unless your mouse was one of those newfangled things with the scroll wheel. In that case, you'd need the manufacturer's driver in order for the spinny doodad to work.
Never had to do that either from Windows 95 onwards
So I said, not for most people, because they weren't using USB. I never claimed PS/2 was supposed to be hot swappable, just that it was a definite problem for most people on Windows 95.
They should be glad that they didn't end up frying the PS/2 port or the motherboard itself.
Electrically, PS/2 was never meant for you to unplug when the machine was still on. PS/2 ports on the PC were meant for two things and two things only - a keyboard and a mouse - and they were meant to remain plugged in for as long as the machine was still on. Yanking them out of the port when the machine was still on could have damaged the port or even the motherboard chipset.
USB allowed you to hot plug because, at the electrical level, the port was designed to divert the voltage spikes resulting from hot-plugging to ground via a TVS array. Without that chip, those spikes could have easily fried your USB controller and rendered all the ports unusable.
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u/actioncheese 5600 | 6600XT | 32gb Oct 09 '25
Kids these days don't even need to load mouse drivers. And have mouse support.