You are describing a number of different issues, so there may be more than one thing wrong here.
Your crystal and caps are likely just fine; it shouldn’t be running at all otherwise.
I’ve never heard of a problem with the direction being initially set wrong. However, yes, there is an option to switch. I’m not sure what is causing the bad fade issue– that is one that I haven’t seen before either. One thing to check: if you leave the chronodot off and let it run for an hour, does it seem to be keeping time reasonably well?
A second question: Was the clock more-or-less behaving correctly after assembling just the blue and green boards?
