ok, based on his clues, I've finally got the following working. The key as he said is to find feeds based on the 6000 or the C7x0 series. Most 5500 apps work fine. Many have the zoom button checked, and work fine when you uncheck them.
zoomed apps: TraveLog PRO, FamilyTree, Patience
no zoom required: ZBEDic + various dictionaries (including the wikipedia) (hint - had to install unicode to get the asian character set) , zKnights, Tetrix, Kismet, irssi, mc
sort of working (no gps, so I can't test it): Wellenreiter, qpeGPS
note: most tkc apps will run if you use the C7x0 or if they specify the 6000. They've mentioned that definitely tkcVideo won't work.
The one app I wanted to get working was Kstars, but no such luck. I found an ipk for it, but it's for OZ and the paths are all wrong.