While I do have the nuclear option of a full system reinstall, I'm still giving it a go trying to unfuck my music Mac

A possibly unpassable hurdle may turn out to be the fact that only one USB port is working - I think (!) I have a restoreable backup but it requires that I boot from an external drive while keeping said backup on another external drive = two USB ports.

- and so far the machine isn't playing nice with USB hubs...

#tech