jeez! i thought i'd received a dead pico2w (didn't test it before installing the shim, mea culpa) but no! you need to press the power button on the shim even without a battery and plugged into usb, then the pico works as intended!
gave up on pybasic on top of circuitpython, have now been porting stefan's tinybasic 2 to the gizmo
some text printing and scrolling is still bad but this is slowly becoming a much more functional basic machine
HUGE step forward
i now have Stefan's basic running on the gizmo with full graphic capabilities of the monochrome 128x64 display and implemented a FatFSUSB driver so i can save files and transfer them to a computer
our wife is making a shell for the gizmo (she's better at fusion than we are) and hopefully we'll have a test print tomorrow
not being able to hold it off a table to use thumbs to type has been a major hindrance in actually using it
it's not perfect, some keys are not quite aligned and so are harder to press than they should be, but it's leagues ahead of trying to use it as a collection of loose parts on the bench
@mavica_again it's cute!
@mavica_again another lovely project!
@mavica_again Actual handheld testing 
@mavica_again This is super cool! :D
guhh i would really have liked if this grove connector wasn't on this side of the board, probably going to remove it and solder straight to pads
the height (and the added width if i was using a grove cable) would make designing a case around it awkward