Thanks for still sticking around Nick.

I replaced the following Diablo files from the first OS release.
/usr/bin/locale
/usr/share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/
/usr/share/locale/en_US/

I don't believe that did anything. Sure it worked here and there, but if I reboot I can get Xkbd fully working once or twice before it breaks without running any commands first.

I did find that replacing just this one file only along with the gconftool command, I can get all keys to work correctly.
/usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/base

I've tested this quite a lot and it seems to do the trick.

Only problem is the DPad no longer functions yet all of the other hardware keys do.

Now if I can get the DPad active again, this should be a reasonable solution.

I tried the trick you posted before but I'm not get the same results with the DPad, it's still dead on my end.

Here's the base file.
Base.zip

Any clue on what to try next and will you test that base file by overwriting your current one?