And now for the dramatic conclusion...
To begin, I have no access to the original machine at the moment, as I'm now out of that area for a couple weeks. I built a similar kernel (same version) on another box that I have at my current location. The new machine is different hardware, so some kernel re-configuring was required, but I kept with the same USB settings (and similar overall design). Interestingly, this machine didn't reproduce the "magic command failed" error, but it did fail very similarly to the original at charging the device. I disabled CONFIG_USB_SUSPEND as suggested, and lo and behold, it now charges the berry. Looks like an excellent diagnosis to me, doctor.
Thanks! :)
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Matt
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