Thanks for the reply guys, it now shows me two things: Firstly, I thought that I was going crazy but in fact sometimes the apple reset procedure indeed doesn't work, - as I am experiencing: In which case, as is set out on that page: "Rebooting the ABS without the WaveLAN card in the carrier worked - the ABS would complete the boot process, but wasn't of much use without a transmitter. I had to reset and try to upload the new firmware several times before it took root. After I had managed to update the firmware and the location settings, I re-inserted the WaveLAN card and the ABS became fully functional again. Unfortunately, it was a long and somewhat arbitrary process - reset, look, reset, upload firmware, etc. Perhaps the ABS needs to go through several cycles to purge the old settings... who knows. Now my original ABS is fully functional again and I won't make the same mistake twice that caused it to go in the first place." How on earth can Apple design and put a product like this on the market in which you can enter complex details but which cant be reset by pushing on the reset button which is there for this precise purpose?
Secondly, this seems like an unnecessarily complicated procedure if the unit won't go back together easily; and if purging the old settings is all that complicated, it is probably better to dump the unit, not to mention wonder if the whole problem might be caused by needing to replace caps etc.
Anyway I am now reassured that this isn't something I have done wrong or that I was just mis-identifying the amber glowing LEDs as red ones and may see if someone wants to tinker with it (somewhere like on ebay)