Odd coincidence that this thread got bumped just when I was going to hunt it down. Thanks, Descalzo!

My N900 just took one too many power-cable-assisted dives to the floor yesterday, and now has an IV, if you will, piggy-backed into the battery contacts, and running to my hobby charger.

After my post above, I looked into it, and there's really not room for all the cool stuff I mentioned above. But now that I need a charging system fix anyway, I'm going to attempt the touchstone mod instead of or in addition to soldering the port back down.

So I'm off to buy the hardware; will report back when I get the mod done.