This question doesn't make any sense.
First, in a previous post you said "pop only now" which indicates that all IMAP profiles would be removed.
Second, SMTP is the sending mechanism. It is not associated with IMAP or POP3. You should have only one configured for each Identity, although it is possible to add a second one as a fallback but that is rare. They are tried in the order they exist in the SMTP hosts list.
Third, removing IMAP profiles has nothing to do with picking up mail, and by "picking up" I assume you mean "downloading" to your local mailbox directory. Please clarify if incorrect.
Fourth, regarding "I want to try something and see if I can live with a single combined inbox", you don't have any choice if mail from all email accounts are retrieved by one Pegasus Mail user, which is your configuration now. Diversion as they arrive to specific Pegasus Mail folders instead of the inbox can be done with new mail filters.

If you want to test one POP3 host, simply disable all of the others while you test.
If you are indeed moving solely to POP3 then you will want all of your IMAP profiled either deleted, or configured to not connect automatically. That option is in the IMAP profile "Settings" tab. Make sure the option "Always connect to this profile at startup" is not ticked.

First, in a previous post you said "pop only now" which indicates that all IMAP profiles would be removed.

Brian, first off, I mixed up pop and smtp. And that will probably continue to happen, I'm so sorry about that! But, yes IMAP is off the table now. It does not loook like things wil not the way I'd hope. So I'm adjusting my mental image.

Got it. (I hope)

Third, removing IMAP profiles has nothing to do with picking up mail, and by "picking up" I assume you mean "downloading" to your local mailbox directory. Please clarify if incorrect.

Yes, downloading, as in nomo Earthlink maill server repository. But, as I write this I feel like I really don't "got it" and I'm feeling very stressed about it. (My problem but I hope readers understand. (and sympathize.)

That is how I see tthis working now.

In the meantime, Dante's inferno is raginng all around me. And my cat is really spooked by all the thunder annd lightning!

Not long afterI posted this, Dante's inferno reeked havic on us (circa 9p) taking all our power with it. In and of itself, power outages are no big deal, and estimated recovery was around 12:15a.However, its now 4:30a and latest estimate is something like 7pm! Who did I make so mad that we will have to deposit all my perishables directly into the trash! Aaaaaaaa, life's such a wonderful thing!

Once you get recovered from your power outage, I suggest configuring all of your IMAP profiles to not auto-connect. Do this by going to Tools > IMAP profiles. Edit each one, going into its Settings tab and making sure the second option, "Always connect...", is not ticked.

After that, please start a new discussion relevant to setting up POP3 access to multiple email accounts from a single user Pegasus Mail installation. This thread has gotten too long at 43 posts.

Ok, Well I'm not exactly recovered and I'm not exactly back, but I'd like to get feedback from you all... Last time I looked at Peggy stuff was right after the third catastrophic failure when all my drives were ejected.

After a reboot, the "peggy" drive was missing a number of subdirectories including one where I'd been working on one specific mailbox, which was ok, because I started working on another branch where I'd made all those changes that we were most recently discussing....

Fast forward to yesterday when I took the "peggy" drive and plugged it into the laptop, which it recognized right away. That's the way it is supposed to work, right. This morning I opened up the laptop and looked at the directories on that driive and some of the stuff I didn't remember seeing yesterday showed up!?? I'm sorry, but this I just don't get.

Has this ever happened to anyone? Anyone have any ideas about WHY this happened? And would anyone classify this as a suspect drive or one that is not necessarily trust worthy?

Drives do go bad. I've been maintainer of the G4L - Diskimaging project since 2004. Have seen both regular hard disk and SSD drives go bad. Sometimes it is disk, controller, or even cable. Sometimes, just redoing connections will solve problem, but other times it can be signs of disk going bad. Do you have the smart setup on drive? What does it show on disk health.

Might want to run Windows check disk tools on drive(s). Once had a friends drive not even mount with windows, but could see drive mount with linux machine, but lots o hard errors. Used GRC's Spinrite on disk, and low level scan took 4 days to run, but fixed lots of things. Drive still would not boot, but the critical directories with Data were readable, and copied the critical files.

I've used linux tools to fix some things.

Generally make a disk image of my computers ever few months, and back up things between machines.

Also, with cost of drives, generally just replace them every few years.

First computer back in 1983 had an option to get a 20M seagate disk, but it was an extra $2000 so my first computer had dual 320K floppies. HeathKit H-120.

Good Luck.