sha2017 badge bootloop when running with both cores

[rmu75]

I tried to resurrect my sha2017 badge, first thing was to flash current firmware from ota.badge.team. unfortunately the badge got into a boot loop. depending on firmware version, either watchdog timeouts without any other messages on console or complete chaos with panic messages interleaved with random garbage and more panic messages.
after spending an afternoon trying different things i got current esp32 micropython unicore to run (but not generic!). rebuilding this repository with option FREERTOS_UNICORE=y yields a firmware that boots. strangely, the multicore firmware comes up on a newer generic esp32-wroom board (but of course is not very useful without actual badge hardware).

so I'm wondering what's going on? is the 2024 binary from ota.badge.team supposed to run on a stock sha2017 badge? does my badge have a hardware issue?