SFX: BANG!! (Patreon)

As I suspected, the floppy disks just needed to be rewritten to freshen up the magnetic domains, so that's great. This thing works perfectly.

...and then five minutes after I took those photos, I heard a noise like a string of firecrackers, turned around, and there was smoke pouring out of the floppy drive.

Fortunately, it was just a RIFA cap. That makes this a real banner week for me, because while that's supposed to be a definitive experience for retrocomputing, I've actually never had a RIFA go before! Everyone always says they smell terrible but I don't get it - it just smells like a campfire, really, which I don't mind too much.

If you're unaware, RIFA caps are basically dead weight. They're supposed to prevent back-EMI onto the powerline as I understand it, but none of us care about that, and they almost never cause any collateral damage, so all I have to do is cut this out and plug the thing back in, no harm done.

Anyway, I know I've posted a lot about this thing but I just figured I'd confirm that it was in fact fully working (trust me, despite the above, it still is,) plus I often don't find a way to squeeze this kind of anecdote into a video and I didn't want it to go to waste.