Thanks Rush,
I had done quite a bit of research previously...several months worth of info, looking through stuff that does and does work. It's definitely hard when the majority of the info is in forums spanning across several sites like this one.
I actually rooted my Droid 2 device a few months back and all went well. But just yesterday I tried to follow CyanogenMod's instructions to flash their ROM and everything went fine up until the post-flash reboot. It got stuck on the red M screen, and now the battery is dead and won't take a charge, and seems effectively bricked.
I've got another one from another family member I can swap batteries with, and I've read the fix involves something called RSD Lite, and sbfs. But I don't know much about either, including how to use them or what to expect from them.