Adrian, I'm sure you're right. I can't see how get rid of an incongruous aspect of the system, and actually wouldn't know what part to remove, so I'm going to start over and try to keep everything minimalist and from the SDK -- to keep the project telling me I lack something and have it offer to supply the needed thing. My directive is to get to CMSIS drivers, but maybe I can get a working system and swap out one driver at a time, reverting if CMSIS substitution crashes my system. Hopefully that will work? Wish me luck.
THANK YOU for your response and have a nice day, ~~ Robert