I suspect the years have finally claimed my venerable Mark I.
Most of the time when I boot it up, it says <<LOADING<< forever. Once in a while, it seems to get past that, but won’t reply to voice commands, although if I ssh in, I can type them and it works just fine!
Should I give it a proper burial, or is there any hope?
maybe a software update can help… but I have no idea how it’s done on a Mark1 I use Picroft.
the worst case would be if the soundchip is broken somehow, then there’s no chance to avoid a burial 
Maybe the SD-card is defective - can you try another SD-card with a fresh Mark-I image? (lastest Mark-I image can be found on the “Get started” page or use this Mark-I image download.
As an alternative you can try my scripts for installing Mark-I with latest Raspbian-OS version: GitHub - domcross/mycroft-mark1-latest-raspbian: Recipe for setting up Mycroft Mark-1 with latest Raspbian OS version
If all my poking and prodding fails, I’ll give that a try!
To be honest, will start with a new SD card. It will most likely saves you from pulling your hair out.
So I tried updating the system using the use unstable/stable trick, and there was no change. Giving commands by text in the mycroft-cli-client works fine, and the Mic Level shows that it’s hearing everything I say, just not doing anything about it. I’m going to pull it apart and try a new SD card…
In case anyone is monitoring, I got lazy and abandoned Mycroft for quite a while. Two weeks ago he woke up and started responding to commands!
Must have been an update, I guess?