And to complete the trifecta, there’s also Aseprite for pixel art (it’s free if you compile it yourself).

To paraphrase an old tweet: “parentheses - for when every thought comes with bonus sub-thoughts”.

You’re able to run MemTest? That’d suggest it’s not actually fried if it can still run things.

Check your BIOS/UEFI to see if Secure Boot was re-enabled. If your CMOS battery died and you didn’t notice, your machine config could have reset to its default values during the power loss.

I believe you are correct. I had my MBR overwritten a few times back in the Windows XP days, but haven’t heard of it happening on modern UEFI setups outside of warnings like these.

I still segregate my system drives out of paranoia though.

There’s a much cheaper model, the Zero, that’s good enough for messing around with and performing simple server tasks like PiHole. Even it has had its price increase multifold over the years, though only to fifteen bucks from an original price of five.

It’s also much smaller than the already tiny Pi, being able to fit in a standard orange pill bottle. Though the downside of that size is smaller and fewer ports, so you need a USB OTG adapter (preferably a hub) and micro HDMI adapter to plug things into it if you don’t want to run it headless.