Well, now that did work. I swapped to CF (aka microdrive), and did as you requested. I'm wondering now if my SD was part of the problem?
mkfs.msdos -F 16 -I /dev/sdd
The restore went perfect. Now I must ask. what did that just do? Do I have emergency rom back again?
BTW, I must add. I think the recommendation to use the Fn+D+M was a great one. Working from read only is great methodology IMO.
Now I'll start working on restoring the hdd if I need to, to get back to installing OpenBSD/zaurus. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I learned a lot from this, and I realize now how intricate my Z really is.