Thank you both for the quick responses! And thanks to the rest of the contributors to this thread, especially qobi! This is very encouraging.

However, I think my input profile was unchanged by the update. If you mean by that the DisablePlugins setting in /etc/bluetooth/main.conf. It is still "network, hal" only, no "input". And my chinook files are still where they were, in /usr/share/X11/xkb-chinook. But there's no reason to expect xkbmap to work or the keys to appear if hildon-im-xkbtool doesn't show the device. The only proof I have they talk at all is that the pairing "succeeds".

But I don't mind getting everybody out of the car then back in and trying again. I'll do that tonight and report success or not!

Update: Got it to work with JoHnY's dbus-send and hcitool scan commands. I also had to to delete the keyboard from the N900's bluetooth devices list and re-pair. Thank you! Now all is fine except the Enter key goes silent periodically. Somewhere else in this thread is the clue to use Ctl-Enter in this case and that indeed works. But I've found after a few times even that doesn't work if the N900 slider keyboard is closed. With the slider open Enter always works. That's fine, it's better open anyway. The little screen is just that much closer. This is an outstanding 12.5 oz full keyboard computer!

Update continued: This still works, but there are anamolies and the setup dies out periodically. The routine is:

1) turn on bluetooth (assuming you've paired the keyboard previously)

2) run the setxkbmap command (I made an alias in my .profile, as an example, it is: "gkb='setxkbmap -device 4 -I -I/usr/share/X11/xkb-chinook -rules base -model pc105 -layout us')

3) Hit some key on the N900's slide-out keyboard (THIS is easy to forget!) and you're set. I've typed this msg using the iGo Ultra Slim Stowaway. For some reason I had to do step's 2 and & 3 twice. Still it's an outstanding solution. Thanks again to all contributors!!