Well I found and installed from the Play Store AIDA64 and indeed it is an excellent small app.
From the results when I ran it just now it seems that the difference is in the Android details for my 64GB box that works fine with CE, You will see from the attached screen shot that my Android build ID is dated 20200818 and is version 2014 which is a later version than the 1719 20200620 dated one shown on rccardude’s screen shots from his AIDA64 report.
SInce I got my X96 Max+ box back on 23rd July 2020 it has though had an OTA update to the Android firmware so not sure what the original version was but anyway after the update a couple of weeks ago the box did need the toothpick routine to get it to boot again from the CE SD card but that was absolutely straight forward and no problems at all were experienced.
So it seems maybe it is a later version that works rather than as I suspected an earlier version. I will check with one of my two friends what Android build is installed in his box that refuses to boot into CE.
Here are my screen shots:
