Things are starting to come together it seems
So now 10 weeks later I'm happy to report that after spending a lot of my spare time on kernel fixes I've it mostly working, specifically I've fixed the following things: 1) Brightness control 2) Wifi no longer working with recent kernels 3) Suspend/resume not working 4) Power and volume up/down buttons not working 5) System not waking up when opening the lid 6) Not charging when the power cable gets plugged in after boot 7) Only drawing max 0.5A from the charger, charging slowly if at all 8) Battery monitoring And Takashi Iwai and Adrian Plazas have fixed: 9) Headphone jack detection