All black MXQ issues have me flustered

[clnupman]

Sup FT

Okay, I'm finally at my wit's end with this unit. I have an all black MXQ box that came in the traditional OTT cardboard box--1GB RAM, 8GB storage, board version s805q_v2.0
I've posted in the site's repository the two SD card based ROMs that work on my box. Here are my current issues:

1. Despite having working wifi, I still have an issue with the constant blue LED, whether the box is on or not.

2. I cannot sideload/dual boot OpenElec, LibreElec, EmbER or anything from SD or USB. This is one area I really want to resolve as it appears to be the only means to help me reclaim most, if not all, of the boxes RAM.

3. I've yet to find an .IMG file that works completely using the usb burn tool(tried several tool versions). 105k thru 112k load successfully, but with "spill-over"/"running paint" video resolution, as does some of the OTA .zip updates

4. I learned oh so late that certain ROM types need to be applied in a certain order as some are partial and some are complete. At one point, I was able to load an OTA update from the EntertainmentBox site, trying to find the best load for this box. But now, with either of the 2 known working ROMs for my board, I can no longer load that Ebox update. I've tried 10 different ROMs but I'm flustered at this point as to which one I should start with as a base and which OTAs should subsequently be applied as test updates

Can someone guide me in the right direction?

[JoeO]

maybe your box is just defective? Spend another $30 and grab another one?

[clnupman]

maybe your box is just defective? Spend another $30 and grab another one?

Very close to doing so, but would opt to spend the extra bread to get a slightly more robust unit

[derf]

I used USB Burning Tool ver.2.0.5.9. to burn the 112K image file. I set it to force erase all. It worked fine.
I had LibreElec ver. 8 Krypton on it in a dual boot but it got into the internal memory and then I lost my blue light and the remote won't work and it wants to freeze intermittently.
I read you need the LibreElec ver. 8.o.1 or higher to stop the freezing.

[clnupman]

UPDATE:

Finally was able to sideload LibreElec and it is snappier than the Android ROMs, but still doesn't detect all RAM. One Android ROM .IMG, that seemed to not load on my first attempt, actually did load all the way; just needed to exercise some patience as the boot screen was black for like 2minutes. It is the ONLY ROM that detects 1GB of RAM(Applications Manager shows xxxMB out of 79X free; assume the rest is used by Android). Still perplexed about the other missing RAM since this board has dual 2GB RAM chips.

Wifi doesn't work, but I found the drivers for my chip. Will test loading those in to see how it all goes.

As for LE, been having issues with vids and audio freezing after maybe 30min in. Too close to give up now.