@antialias,
1. All USB ports work Good
2. Brightness control works Good
3. SD Card reader couldn't check, I don't have a spare SD card 100% sure it'll work
4. When I booted I got terrible artefacts on the screen so I was forced to disable your AppleIntelFramebuffer patches in the config.plist to get rid of the artefacts. I've noticed in your comment there it's for 1600x900 resolution. I have 1920x1080 resolution. The artifacts are during boot or after logging on? If latter, it could be you need to downgrade your BIOS. Known to cause artifacts with A13 on the E6430/E6230. The FB patches are for 1600x900 and above, it's for HDMI video/audio
5. Still no sound device detected. Make sure cache was created successfully. Did you see a successful output after you ran the commands or error?
If error, re run the last 2 commands until you have successful output
6. I run kextstat | grep -v com.apple and your AppleHDA_ITDkext was not loaded
run kextstat | grep -i AppleHDA
Should output 2 items
com.apple.driver.AppleHDAController (274.7)
com.apple.driver.AppleHDA (9267.0)