a10g2 better firmwares?

[viking]

Anyone still using arnova? I am starting to use my old one more since it makes a good e-reader without wearing out the screen/battery/etc of a more modern tablet. Can at the same time play internet radio thru headphones for hours at a time on a well performing battery.

There were a lot of alternate firmwares for the a10g2 that I couldn't try earlier, because they required a windows machine to jam it on to the tablet. Now I finally got a win8 machine... will this do the job, and does anyone have a favorite firmware that takes less than the ridiculous 3 minutes or so I need to boot my arnova?

It seems the various arnova firmware sites have gone quiet, and I don't know if anyone has actually done this with win8.0 (which doesn't seem all that backward compatible).