Well, after various alarms & excursions, trips to Moreton-in Marsh (very chilly) plastering holes in the wall and other excuses, I finally ran 982me.pif and went and hid.
The system booted up OK & I now have a 98SE system with the good bits of ME grafted on. Thus far thus good, no sign of any problems, even after I 98Lited the hybrid and got rid of stuff I won't use.
I even have native Firewire support
, although the PC has no Firewire ports
Rest assured that if it all goes pear shaped you will be the very first to know, except possibly any neighbour within 100 yards (and the cats).