Thanks everyone.

Halftux's suggestion gets a terminal up but as elros34 noted, you've got to also stop osso-startup-wizard from starting as it grabs keyboard focus.

Once you've got that renamed, the xterm starts in focus.

Unfortunately for my N900, if you 'sudo tscalibrate' it runs but my screen despite vibrating on each press is asking me to press closer to point 1. There must be something completely borked with the touchscreen. I do have an old touchscreen so I'll try swapping that in. I'd replaced that a few years back as it used to lose calibration regularly and the new screen fixed that.

I'll have another look to see if there's any corrosion or muck on the screen connections too.