I came up with some directions that are clearer for someone like me who needs it all spelled out:
1. Make sure your kindle base firmware and serial (beginning 6 characters) match the requirements in the OP
2. download the dev firmware that matches your FW and put it on the root of the drive, and update
3. download kindle-jb-factory-1.2-r15011.tar.xz and put the main-htmlviewer.tar.gz file on the root of the drive (there's an extra folder in here, that confused me). update.
4. if successful, you will get a "book" saying you're jailbroken.
5. Now download JailBreak-1.15.N-FW-5.x-hotfix.zip and put the .bin file on the root of the drive and update. (make sure to remove the htmlviewer file in previous step)
6. update to main fw
7. install plugins
8. create empty “update.bin.tmp.partial” folder and put that on the root of the drive to prevent future updates.
That would have saved me so much time digging around in what steps I'm supposed to do.
The plugins are a whole other behemoth of "what in tarnation am I supposed to do with these??" and "these instructions don't make sense or aren't updated for PW4 so I'm having to infer and read between the lines" and "what works for PW3 seems to work for PW4"
https://www.ereader-palace.com/4-mus...eaking-kindle/
This makes it way easier than the current...."spaghetti" of instructions I can currently find. One link that links to something else, that links to a main directory listing, that has a footnote and a P.S.S.S.S is anything that needs a complete overhaul.
Anyways, thanks for all the help.