Keyboard dock issues - katkiss 6.0.1

O happy day- got a keyboard dock. Happiness was short lived; after allowing the dock to charge overnight, I was unable to get either of my tf300's to work with it. The tablets will recognize it as a charging device (you can see the 2 battery icons on the status bar) but that's it- no track pad or keyboard functions. I haven't tried to see if usb is active, though. I've attempted the troubleshooting steps I've seen online, like cold booting a tablet while connected to the dock, all to no avail...
Anyhow, obviously there's no warranty in play here, so I was curious if anyone had any know-how on servicing the dock? I read on Tom's Hardware that the dock needs to be glued somehow after disassembly, so i'd like to consider that "last resort", but if that is what it's going to take, that's okay. Anybody have any suggestions?

[Q] Going from TF101 Stock to KatKiss 6.01.....without Volume Down button

Ok, this is a pretty specific question to my weird situation. I was trying to upgrade and it failed, so I had to flash back to the Stock ICS ROM from Asus.

Is there anyway to install TWRP, so that I can then install KatKiss 6.01...but without using the Volume down button (which is broken)?

I can:
- Boot into APX mode (via power volume-up)
- Use EasyFlasher 8.3 to try to install TWRP 2.2.1 (which I was going to upgrade later)
- But after the install of TWRP via EasyFlasher , you have to immediately reboot into recovery mode. and to do that you need power and Volume Down. If I just boot normally, then my understanding is TWRP gets overwritten.

FYI: I understand there is a command level "adb reboot recovery" option. But that doesn't work right after an installation of TWRP via EasyFlasher, as it is not APX connectable at that point.

Any help, thoughts, guidance?