I figured things out.
I installed the NITDroid 2.7 installer before I installed the dependencies and when I tried to use it I was provided the list of dependencies which had not been met in app manager. I then used "apt-get install" in x-term for each of them and now have all of the dependencies met. Just need to figure out how to partition my MicroSD card.. Don't have an external card reader for MicroSD so I'll need to do it within the N900... if only fdisk were available.

EDIT: Found the problem. I installed Power Kernel and Multiboot myself before runnning the NITDroid installer and apparently NITDroid installer likes to handle these dependancies itself.
I used Settings>Clear Device and flashed my N900 to remove the Power Kernel then downloaded and ran the installer again. 2.6.8 stopped at Formating ext3 so I upgraded the installer to 2.7 and worked like a charm (but installed popov 0.0.8).
Only problem now is finding any software whcih works with this version from the Android Marketplace (Adobe Flash Player 11 does not and many of the games don't make it through install, killing themselves in that process) beyond Open Office Reader....