I have learned I likely blew the fuse providing power to the external floppy drive on my Toshiba Portégé T3600CT. The crime? I plugged an IBM ThinkPad floppy drive with the SAME EXACT GODDAMN CONNECTOR into it. ThinkWiki says:
"ATTENTION!
Also Toshiba produced a cable with same connectors as IBM 74H0219. Toshiba 20mm connector pinout is different: at the very least, pins for power and ground are shorted relative to IBM. Tip by Ziginox."
Going to fetch my Toshiba Portégé T3600ct this weekend, and begin the process of re-celling the battery. Hopefully the PATA SSD I bought from Amazon will work a treat in it.