i took the laptop apart looking for a write protect switch and did not find one, but i'm wondering if i misunderstood and am going to try again. i also plugged the memory card back in to see what would happen, and it read it as external. so, i formatted it and rebooted with only a formatted flash drive, and it was actually able to push it down from the rom. when i rebooted back into the hard drive install, it then told me it was leaving developer mode, suggesting that it was in developer mode? i couldn't get it to repeat that trick on the ssd card, so i'm going to format the hard drive and try it again.
the keys on the keyboard haven't come back yet.
what i want before i open it again is a clear video showing exactly what the switch is and where it is and youtube isn't helping.