ok, got most of it figured out at last.
the topic thread hit a software threshold that will not allow it to go beyond a number i've yet to pinpoint. i think it's gonna be that going beyond perhaps 15,000 posts is more than the software can handle.
i brought the system down so i could preserve all the posts in the thread, and to give me the added horsepower to move and manipulate a file of this magnitude. then i chopped off about 3 days worth of posts and uploaded the rest, then locked it down.
even if the software can be tweaked to go beyond 15k posts, the dang thing is a monster to work on and we'd best just start an hh bug part two thread, so the party will continue on ... i'll do that now.
thanx for your patience!