@carlo 

"i broke the sd slot" my congratulation 😉 

The system (daemon) must be installed on device that is booting your RPi, therefore if you made your system to boot from USB Stick, should be working. I never done it, but logically should be not a problem. The OS is loading Daemons from the booting media, so it can be SD card, USB Stick or SSD or whatever.

BR Pi Master

That's what you get when you have clumsy fingers ☹️ 

I'm going to try and set everything up via usb

Hi,

"That's what you get when you have clumsy fingers" you are not alone 

Please keep us informed about results here as it is knowledge base for everybody

BR Pi Master