In the last 24h I found an old 80GB PATA drive in the cupboard which enabled me to literally blow the dust off a mk1 ATV box and test/boot the 7.0.2 image that I created back in ~July when the HDD died (and then vacations, etc. forced me to down tools).
It works, meaning it boots and CHD is active, but it's not a great result. I'm using the same collection of hacks and tricks used on the OE 6.0.1 build but the result is not as nice. Gut feel (from general experience on many devices) is that Jarvis is a little heavier in RAM footprint than Isengaard and on a box already RAM starved Jarvis looks to be a step too far. I'm able to play lower-bitrate and smaller sized media reasonably well, but higher bitrate and larger filesize things cause "reboot required" lock-ups. Aside from RAM use being higher Jarvis has some VideoPlayer changes (core plumbing) that move the codebase further along from the last CHD-supported point and it's clear things are not aligned; which is something I am not skilled to fix.
I'll sleep on it for a few days but as things stand this means I won't be releasing a 7.0.2 build, at least not with CHD support. You can get a cheap Amlogic box for $40 that makes the mk1 AppleTV look and feel like the 10-year old design that it is. As much as I'm fond of them, I couldn't use this build as a daily or even occasional use box.