The re-install worked. Thanks!
But I DID have the latest 2.3.5 installed. Also as noted I was moving to a new directory and only downloading files from this older site as needed for updates. This should have used the latest construction files when deleting and regenerating the MMHTTPDB.php file.
I'm happy it works now and thanks for solution but confused in why this was the case even with current files? Cached somewhere?
It would be nice to have some "integrity check" file to execute which would check for issues like this.