Hi Duncan.

> I asked this a few weeks ago, and got some helpful replies and so have
> made a bit of progress - but even logged in as root, I cannot get the
> thing to start.
> 
> startx produces:
> 
> Waiting for X server to begin accepting connections
> ...
> ...
> fatal server error
> failed to establish all listening sockets

I don't know if you (and Justin) got any further since, so I thought I'd try to
help you.
It can't be the usual X-server-not-suid problem as this only keeps normal users
from using X while it works for root...
What I would check next are the devices.
Go to /dev and check if you have the devices qms0, vidcvideo, ptyp* and the
link from /dev/mouse to qms0.

Maybe this helps,

Markus