I feel as if anything I do at this point is likely to make things worse without a greater understanding of what might be going on here. @svenrademakers, I realise you're not afiliated with this project any longer – but you've likely got as great an understanding of this device at firmware level as anyone here... does what I'm seeing make sense to you, and can you help me fix/restore my system? (In confirmation, the only change I made when successfully booted with

boot_unlocked

defined, many months ago, was to set the MAC stored in the EEPROM - nothing else!)