How does it look for my ailing EeePC ?

Not good, unfortunately.
It seems now that the principle problem involves the black-screening when the DCIn cable is plugged in or unplugged. This problem is still present after three days and is definitely not right.
My own feeling is that this has somehow messed up the Xandros OS (or could it have been Xandros' Grub?) so that nothing othr than Xandros is available. No Grub menu is available and no menus result from holding the ESC, F2 or F9 keys during the boot.
Essentially no replies were received to my forum post on this issue which generally means that the problem is not resolvable.
I sent a private message to what seems to be a key EeePC developer from the forums so it'll be interesting to see if any reply is received.
However, the most likely outcome is that this is a hardward problem which requires the machine to be replaced.