As the song goes... I did it again.
Clean re-installed off LiveCD, rebooted, then downloaded updates. Rebooted fine. Went for driver update ... nvidia driver recommended for old Radeon. After hefty wait driver install failed. Rebooted and dropped out of boot screen to the blinking cursor as explained above... no login screen.
Put in username and password at each command prompt gets a welcome to Linux Lite message, but then just another user prompt. No idea what command it wants.
Need to reverse the dud driver install, I guess. Can live without it. Feel like a lost newborn...