having needed to wipe and restore my tablet from scratch, to avoid putting back any brokenness in configurations, I've been writing up how to restore it all manually from a file-by-file backup.

http://wiki.maemo.org/ManualBackupAndRestore


hopefully this means my stumbling progress will save others some pain! and maybe hold out hope to other people whose tablets are a bit corrupted and previously didn't dare wipe and restart!

Paul