Wow! someone is still using a chumby 8! I designed the hardware and some of the firmware... if you get stuck I might have some old notes laying around somewhere still, happy to share them. But from the looks of your post, you've figured out more than I can easily recall about the design.
I miss my Chumby One, it had some kinda hardware failure while support was waning (looks like things got better). I've got an Echo 5 now, but it's kinda soulless.
A lesson many will learn from repairing lots of electronics is "always check the electrolytic capacitors." Even before and after the infamous Capacitor Plague, they were know for their relative unreliability.
This is really cool from a 'historical preservation' angle!
From a sane human being angle, this is a ton of work for what is effectively replaced by a Google Nest Hub, Lenovo M8 docked, or Echo 8 or such. Often for well under $50
That said, I would kill for an unlocked bootloader on the FB Portal now that FB is dropping the product. At least give me the ability to install other apps. lol
None of those are user-controlled, though; a Chumby is unambiguously the user's tool, rather than serving corporate interests that are quite likely neutral-to-adversarial to the user's best interests.
Oh, my mistake; I assumed it was one of their "smart displays" (https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/smart-display/), but yeah, Android is... less bad than the others in that list, at least.
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