All righty, well it's time for an update.
I really couldn't make any progress until last week when my screen arrived. Operation "Revive Dead Screen" was unsuccessful. One of the critical GPIO pins got shorted somewhere or a component to regulate said line failed, and nothing gets past the white screen. I noticed that one of the pins on my FFC cable was gone dull and figured that maybe it had gotten bent too much and snapped part of the pin off. Ordered a new cable, and got to watch that same pad melt. So a new cable did not solve my problem. Went ahead and dropped $30 on a new screen and it has worked like a charm. A HUGE thanks to
@Shank for troubleshooting my screen with me at 1AM his time, helping me trace the pins on the IC with the datasheet, offering ideas, and advising me on a new screen.
I'm sure some of you are wondering how I overcame my biggest case dilemma: no screw posts to hold it together. I decided that screw posts are too hard and that I could just hot glue it all shut! Just kidding. I later found out that my method is actually super similar to how Downing puts small screw posts into his portables.
(I definitely had pictures of this process, but I dunno what happened to them)
Essentially I went to Lowe's, bought $3 worth of screws and nuts, and then spun five nuts onto each screw. I applied a coat of epoxy around the screws, but was careful not to get any on the screw. This gave me my screw posts. From there, I epoxied them to the front of my case, and once that dried I smothered more epoxy around them, which was probably overkill but they ain't moving. This ended up being a really good solution, but I won't ever use it again because I'm going to design screw posts into my cases from here on out. If I ever have to frankencase (perish the thought) then I could definitely see myself using this method again.
My internals had to be tweaked a little bit to accommodate the new screen. The screen was the exact same size, but the drive board had to sit directly on top of the screen. This just meant that I needed to move my PCB to the other side of my case, which wasn't too difficult. The lack of an eight inch ribbon cable also means that my case could have been thinner with this new screen.
Putting it all back together has gone pretty smoothly. Had a couple of hiccups with some parts of my controls, but it took me like 20 minutes to get everything ironed out and working again there. Sound is having issues, but I just need to take some more time to sit down and troubleshoot it. Other than that, its fully functional!
The back of my case shrunk, so I'm getting a new one printed. Hopefully I'll be able to close it up and never have to take it apart again next week.
I also want to thank all of you for your help, and especially the other 2017 contestants. Even though it was a contest, I know for a fact that I received lots of help and advice from each contestant even though we were competing. Thank you all for your help!