Nvm

Drive is clean again and so is the board. I replaced what tantalums I had on hand. The last one on the board I can do with the board in the case.

Tomorrow I'll clean the case and then let's hope everything works.

Oh and the PSU wasn't riveted in after all, just stubborn.

I gave the power supply innards a visual inspection, adjusted the voltages, put it back together and I get ... Nothing. Black screen and two beeps.

I created a reference diskette (the drive is 720k only btw), but it only briefly spins up. A friend with the same drive said the electrolytics on the spindle motor pcb were leaking on his. So I guess that's an issue on mine too.

Of course the pads are coming off

Seizure time. Srsly is it asked too much to check for low battery instead of just going nuts with no way to stop it until it is empty?

Well, here we go. A bit botched but I'm not going to shelf that until I get those SMD caps. This needs to get off my bench.

Very interesting! Before, the monitor would know it's getting a signal but the image would stay black. The computer would sit a bit and then access the floppy drive shortly, beep twice and then do nothing. Still no image. My assumption was, that the boot process is completely silent if the system lost its configuration, and it requires the configuration diskette before it will even know it has graphics.

I was wrong. The black screen was a function of the dead caps in the floppy drive. Huh.

Floppy drive works again!

I love this sound.