Opened up Allegra again, on instructions from hachi and http://www.rigacci.org/comp/312T/disassemble/ , and re-attached the mouse cable to where it was supposed to be plugged in. I got a datachisel and finally got the right hinge cover off successfully.

I now have the mouse working again. I have the old CD drive working on it, I think -- I have a floppy drive for mnemosyne!Thalia, and a floppy for Allegra, so I got the drivers for the Acer external CDRW downloaded and installed on Allegra, so now Allegra has a CD drive again. This makes it possible for me to think about installing other things, especially the NIC that I got for it.

NIC might be working, now that I told 98 that it is supposed to know TCP/IP ...

And. OMG. Allegra lives!

Next step: installing the little ...

Woo! Online! With Allegra! New location for computermachine coming right up!

Now I can happily disassemble Mnemosyne!Thalia, put deadbrick!Thalia back together, and ship deadbrick!Thalia back to the BOfD. It'll take me a bit to get Allegra the way I want it to be for my interim machine, but it'll work. Yes indeed. It'll work.

I'm so very tired, but feeling so very satisfied with myself.