Too Long; Didn't Read
My workhorse computer, an ancient iMac (circa 2011) crashed a few days ago after a routine Mac OS update. Once upon a time, this would have been a catastrophe. But that was before the time of Time Machine. So I jumped through a few hoops till I managed to get the Disk Utility running on the Mac (restart while holding down R) and then plugged in my venerable Time Capsule (circa 2008). After a bit of wheezing and whirring, the Time Capsule connected to my Mac’s Time machine and informed me that I had last backed up my Mac a few months ago.