[PROBLEM] Waveshare5/Sainsmart 7" HDMI with GPIO touch

[Matt Larose]

Hey all,
Looking for some help on a screen I have, with Xbian. I love the xbian image, it's fast and clean and runs great!
However the screen I have attached is not going well. I had it attached to raspian (with built in drivers for this screen) and it works good, but any other image requires drivers to be installed manually.
Notro drivers seem to work fine on newer versions of raspian, and I've had success before with an overlay - however an overlay doesn't provide the touch screen function.

So here's the deal on this screen: It's a 7" (or 5 depending who you ask) HDMI LCD screen with GPIO pins for touch capability. I purchased it from "sainsmart" who sold it to me as a 7" HDMI LCD screen (800x480)
They provide an old raspbian image with an outdated kernel. It works, I suppose, for what it is.
The pi shows this device as ADS7846, and searching this term online just leads me to a group of screens (from 3.2" to 10.1") so that gave me nothing.
Searching the driver package on the pre-built image (5_HDMI_LCD.tar.gz) leads me to waveshare's 5" screen.....I have tried their drivers, and they work exactly the same as the ones provided by sainsmart. I'm assuming one of those manufactures is copying the other. In any case!
I cannot get it to function in Xbian.
When turned on right out of the box (freshly burned SD card with Xbian rpi3) the screen is all lines and colours, but then turns into the first one quarter of the xbian OS screen. Touch does not respond.
I've tried installing manufacturer drivers, but that seems to break Xbian, because after reboot, nothing loads. It stops at a kernel panic.

Is there anything out there for these screens??