I’ve learned quite a bit recently after de-bricking my not actually bricked device. I wrote about it in This Post and I include some links to other posts/sites that should be useful to you in repurposing the device. Of course mine is a Gen1 device (with supported firmwares starting with 03 and 04), not a Gen2 device (with 02 firmware)
On a Gen1 I suspect it is possible to coerce the factory bootloader into loading whatever you’d like via clever manipulation of the contents of various partitions.
