I have done it several times with no apparent damage but I will defer to the judgement of the service man and leave this little trick up to the judgement of the vehicle owner. Maybe some other forum member can post something on this.

It seems to me, and this is just my opinion, that if you remove the ground cable with the engine running and then turn the engine off before reconnecting it, that this would minimize the danger of damage to the computer but that is just my opinion. Of course if the alternator is bad, the engine is going to die anyway so my idea would be moot.

I have heard that just jumping one car to another can damage the electronics so what are we to believe? I know with a truly dead battery, you have to reset the clock and all the pushbuttons on the radio which is a pain. When I was growing up, cars had generators, not alternators and most were straight shift. If your battery was dead, just get someone to give you a push with the car in low or second gear and then let the clutch out when you got up your speed and the motor would start. Ah for the good old days. I guess pushing would still work with a manual transmission. <img src="/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" />