I guess you've tried everything i'd written in the gpsdaemon thread's [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] which was ~12 yrs back. I'm a little rusty on that stuff now but i can say almost certainly that there's no relationship between the main system software (fw_all.bin data) in rgn 14/0x0E and the splash data in rgn16/0x10 in these older 'region-only' devices.

It's known that forcing a fw downgrade might clear the nonvol memory which can restore factory settings. Unfortunately i don't have any earlier version of 296's fw than V6.10 either. You could try changing the V6.10's Version# in RGN_Tool to a lower number from the official list:
Code:
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For example, This shows V6.10 in [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] changed to V5.70:

Spoiler: Image
[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]

IMPORTANT: Save it ONLY as 026001000570.rgn (safe naming).

Then try flashing that with [Only registered and activated users can see links. ], it might fool the device into clearing nonvol on the next boot cycle. Going even lower is more likely to force a factory reset but doing so can also sometimes cause problems if the modified version number is very low, so if you try that it's all at your own risk of course.