Well, today the 550c started up just fine as it did yesterday. Unfortunately, the random fade out (and restore) of the screen backlight is still with it. No rhyme or reason to it. I rebuilt the desktop and then ran Norton Disk Utilities 3.5 from an original boot floppy (still good after all these years) and fixed the usual host of small issues like dates & times due to the dead clock battery, bad icons etc, and a couple more major ones regarding directory clutter and issues. All went without a hitch. Also installed ClarisWorks 4.0 from floppies just for fun and that went as it should. Finally, trashed the remainder of small apps and utilities that were Japanese versions. So I think it's time to use this everyday and see what happens...