Incredible news, I can see the clearing up ahead where these recapping videos disappear. Keep your channel set to McRetro.net and we’ll see you through.

This time we’re working on the two floppy drives from the Sega TeraDrive Model 2. They’re serial numbers 03464 and 03465, a rather lovely little pair! Unlike many ordinary floppy drives, these don’t have a separate power connector on the back. Instead, power is integrated into the TeraDrive’s own cabling arrangement.

Each drive has two electrolytic capacitors to replace, one 47 µF and one 10 µF. These are older than the Model 3 drive we worked on previously, and unfortunately the corrosion around the original components was considerably worse.

I tried using the desoldering tweezers again, but the leaky capacitors weren’t particularly cooperative. The heat was doing a wonderful job of making a mess of the old components and their plastic housings. Perhaps these tweezers weren’t quite the miracle I’d hoped for!

There was also a small incident involving one of the ribbon cables. I managed to damage it during disassembly, then attempted to patch things up while putting the drive back together. Whether that repair will hold up remains to be seen.

Eventually both floppy drives were reassembled with their replacement capacitors. The corrosion was certainly concerning, but at least we’ve made another little bit of progress. We’ll give the drives a proper test in a future video and find out whether everything is behaving itself.

In other sad news, we’ve lost ASSEMblergames.com. Everyone can now head to ObscureGamers.com, where some of the community regrouped and ASSEMblergames material was being preserved.

In some ways it still lives on. Not as the monster it became, but as the fountain of knowledge and wonderful folk who came to sip and share their own. Here’s to you!