The board is a STM32F103RBT6 dev board (like a bigger blue pill) that I was given, with the f103 swapped for the f405 and the 2 capacitor pins lifted on the f405. I had the parts so I thought I'd give it a shot.
I suspected it should boot, so I will keep looking! I guess for some reason it thinks there's a button press happening during boot (as far as I can tell that's the only way to invoke the bootloader screen on boot). I'm using the latest firmware and bootloader, but have tried earlier versions of both.
Thanks Xavier - and thanks for all the work on this project and making it open source :-)