Hmm, that may well involve several thousand kilometres!
In desperation I installed Calibre on a newer computer and *success*!
The computer was able to read from the Kobo, and create a new library
My old Celeron must have been two slow on i/o, causing the time-out - Calibre is quite a demanding application.
I will now take a look at the Kobo utilities app now, thanks for your help PeterT!