Thanks for the reply. I swapped in the replacement, but got a blank browser screen with no error. Flushed cache, tried again from beginning, but same result.
FWIW: the install got all green check marks in stage 2 ;) seems to bomb after credentials are populated in database.php
I probably should ensure all know that I am working with PowerCMS and not PowerStore in this particular case. Assuming a db connection.creation script is same in either case, but in case there is a difference...