It's a joke.. https://xkcd.com/378/

I believe you're thinking of France's minitel (wikipedia) . I never used or saw it myself. Living in a neighboring country, i did see quite some adds mentioning it on their tv stations. Trente-six-quinze-minitel! Club Dorothée FTW! :)

I'm here just to join you shouting out. Great peace of software.

Yellow brick

Another update with some sound specific stuff and a firmware update fixed it! Not sure which one triggered the fix.

Yes, alsamixer (as does my main volume control app pavucontrol) does show volume as maxed out. It seems there's something after that that messes with the volume. :(

We've even been doing that for thousands of years!

I'd read more of this.

Task failed successfully!

This might turn in to something worthwhile: https://smallandroidphone.com/

A suit?

Sounds ergo and mech and board to me :) Any chance of a picture, I'm intrigued.