I got my dead internal display to work with an external display on mirrored mode, and I got it to reliably boot past Apple‘s incredibly finicky AMD graphics drivers.
I ordered a bottle of Jim Beam, and I’m going to bed. I’m fucking exhausted.
If anyone wants to offer further advice, go ahead, but any Apple bashing will be firmly ignored because I just don’t have it in me to take it
I have an iMac from 2012 running windows 11, and even that was a minor ball-ache (Rufus, drivers identified with boot Camp). Granted, an absolute walk in the park compared to what you did. Point is I agree, the hardware is still fine and for browsing and YouTube etc - it's still a great looking device that works. I had a play around with a new HP All-in-one recently and the machine itself was so uninspiring and generic in comparison, despite being well over a decade newer.