At the risk of sending this backup laptop to join my other in the great trash heap in the sky, I think I’m ready to make a comeback (but don’t call it that). The damage to the other one – melting – was a little too significant to make replacing the power assembly alone feasible. Here’s what the outside looked like:

So yeah, the end of an era it is. But now I have a spare up and running (though it has monitor/screen issues of its own), and hopefully can keep doing this for a while. I’ve got lots of ideas ready to go.