when I finally succeeded yesterday I had to use the file pack from the torrent (which is now up to 6 seeders! woot!) not the one linked in the first post. And it took like 42 tries.
And required a change of user. And a hold down of the reset button before the flash process for like 10 seconds, until the speakers popped. No idea if it was the change of file, the # 42, the user, or the reset, but something did it finally.