nutty -

You'll need to give some context for the fuse questions. ENIAC was a computer and drew several kilowatts. Common desktop computers use less current. UK computers use twice the voltage and half the current of comparable US computers. I don't know of a "legal limit" for what commercially sold home/business computers and peripherals are allowed to draw, although there may be EIA and/or IEEE (or other) standards on this. If you're referring to the internal fuse on a piece of equipment, the answer is "what's shown on the label."

The "hot pluggable" is a little easier, since it's a relatively new term. It simply means that a peripheral device can be removed and/or connected without shutting down the main machine.

The term is most often seen in connection with RAID arrays of hard drives, on large servers. You'll often see it as "hot swappable" as well as "hot pluggable," and you'll have to determine from your course material whether they consider them interchangeable terms. It also comes up especially with laptops where older versions required you to turn off the machine to take out a floppy drive and replace it with a CD drive, for example. With a few newer ones you can make the swap with the machine running. USB peripheral devices are generally "hot pluggable" although the term isn't often used in this context. You can connect your camera, download your pictures, and disconnect the camera without turning off the computer, if you follow the correct procedures.

John