Disabling the SD Card did not help me with the reboot issue. I prepared everything to update BIOS, but discovered that I already had that version loaded.
Took it apart and pushed the BIOS reset button, I think. Seemed like it pressed. Then I reset BIOS to default settings with F4 enter, and rebooted successfully from suspend a couple of times.
Started using shut down options in user menu, login menu and Terminal and got the blank screen treatment again.
Poked around in BIOS trying to find out what is causing the issue and found out that setting the OS system to Linux (an option reportedly for Yocta, which I couldn't figure out how that was relevant); because I am using Linux Mint Cinnamon Tara, causes the Digital Audio to malfunction.
As a matter of fact - the Digital Audio S/PDIF has never functioned. It just really becomes a problem when I switch the OS to Linux from Windows in BIOS, BECAUSE - the alternative that works for the 3.5mm out: analog stereo output, is suddenly not available. I put the BIOS OS option back to defaults and rebooted a couple of times and the analog stereo output came back (in the System Settings / Control Panel / Sound. Probably installing PulseAudio Volume Control helped make that work but this was a problem that when I got the audio to work I didn't determine what fixed it.
So the device seems to be scared of me poking and prodding around with practically no idea what I am doing and started behaving. I don't expect that to last, but that is only half of the solution I asked for in two other separate threads before I was directed to this one. Originally, the question was...
I would like to know how to shut the device OFF other than pushing the button. I would like to use Terminal "shutdown now", or use the Power Off... option in the GUI menu and have the device shut all the way off. Not sit there with an orange light and power going to USB ports. Shut. Down. Off.
The question is whether the only way to turn it off is push and hold the button?
I am interested in this because I would like to next go about making sure that it can function through a hibernate state.
Is this device designed to operate in this manner?
Everything else is working fine, so thanks for that.