Looks like my phone is somehow screwed up.
I have nothing plugged into USB at all yet cat /sys/devices/platform/musb_hdrc/charger shows 1 so it thinks there is a charger plugged in.

Seems that whatever hardware device or component detects the presence of something plugged into the USB port is somehow telling the kernel (and nolo) that there is something plugged into the USB port when there is not.

So I have a problem where when I boot the phone with no cable, nolo acts like there is a cable plugged in, tries to do what it normally does when cable is plugged in but cant (because there is actually no cable so the other part that pulls power from the USB power pins says "hey, no power here" and makes nolo shut down)

Then if I do boot the system (with either the Nokia charger or the Nokia PC cable connected) it boots into actdead mode and proceeds to charge the battery.

Tried reflashing and that didn't help.
It cant be a dead battery since I have charged it to full (where the LED went green and all the indicators said the battery was 100% full), disconnected the power cable, powered off the phone then tried to power it back on again where it had the same "wont power up" symptoms.

I hope to god my precious N900 doesn't have a hardware failure otherwise I am in deep trouble (if my N900 wont work, I will have to buy a new phone and I seriously doubt I can find another N900 here in Australia at a price I can afford)