Wetek Play, what to do with it?

    I have a couple of Wetek Play (Openelec edition) boxes I just pulled from storage, and apparently they are still working (minus one of the two remotes which is missing, who knows maybe it'll turn up). Both of the Wetek Plays I have are currently on LibreELEC 8.2.5.

    I have some questions and this may not be the best forum to answer them, but if you have any pointers on which forums/communities I can try please do throw them around.

    1. I was thinking of using one of them as a proper linux box. Maybe some version of Debian or something. This would be mainly to have an always-on machine on my home to run some lightweight docker containers (e.g. a Twingate connector), maybe as a print server and generally lightweight things of this nature. I remember that at a time there was even a full desktop Ubuntu 14 image floating around on the now dead Wetek forums. Sure I could do these things with a Raspberry Pi, but why go to the trouble of buying yet more hardware. Does anyone know of what I could install? I know there is Armbian but I don't know if it's compatible.

    2. I distinctly remember having trouble (on occasion) in the past with the SIM card inside the Wetek Play. Sometimes it would lose contact, and the machine wouldn't boot. Then you have to disassemble the box & reseat the SIM to fix the problem. Does anyone actually know the purpose of that sim card? Is it some kind of hardware lock? And can we cancel it? Whatever its purpose I would guess it no longer serves that effectively, so if it can be removed/cancelled as a feature that's one less thing to worry about.

    3. How about the second Wetek Play? I noticed that there are still community builds supporting it. Since I already have a more modern machine (ASUS PN50) running LibreELEC for video, and I don't really need the TV tuner:

    - I was thinking maybe using it as a LibreELEC headless/music-only player. Then I would need advice on which addons I could try for that (thinking of features such as Internet Radio, remote library and playback control from phone, playback over network etc)

    - Another option is if netflix is available with the latest community build, I could use it as a netflix machine at another location where a new smart tv is not yet a priority.

    4. How about that serial cable that came bundled with the Wetek Play? is it just for debugging? Any other 'crazy'/interesting usages it could have?

    4. Please give any other suggestions you see fit, maybe there's a use case for these machines that would serve a need that is not a top priority right now and has skipped my mind.

    1. Forget it, there is zero modern Linux support for Meson 6 hardware and no modern distro's support booting 3.10 vendor kernels from 2013 (that were already dated in 2015 when it launched and killed OpenELEC).

    2. It's detected during boot and thus prevents other box vendors shipping product that used the WeTek OS. You can remove it, but then the box won't boot and there's no modern u-boot alternative.

    3. You can run LE 9.2.8 via dtech images, but that's the end of the line for the box, and K18 is on the traliing edge of add-on compatibility these days (not that most authors switched their focus to Python3 based add-ons used from K19 onwards).

    4. Only crazy debugging..

    4. Put LE 9.2.8 on it with TVHeadend server and then use a newer client device to watch TV from it .. or use it with LE 9.2.8 to watch stuff on the same box .. or bin it, there's really isn't anything else it's good for (too slow for retro gaming).