Upgrading to 2.03:  Kernal flash seemed to complete.  The bottom line global percent seemed to stop at around 55%.  Waited five minutes and rebooted as per your instructions.  No Video on HDMI at all.  Tried your suggestions.  Put IP address in firefox browser but doesn't connect.

Please note that in some cases, your receiver may not automatically reboot after the firmware finishes flashing. If your receiver does not reboot after over 1 minute the flash operation completed, please press and hold down the power button for 5 seconds in order to do a hard reboot of the unit.

Good news is that I do get the orange power button back to blue, which you say means the new kernal flashed alright.

Next steps for trouble-shooting?

Unbelievable!  All your people have been bricking their boxes for over three months.  You still have the bad  2.03 firmware up?  Fix the problem and tell people not to upgrade.

The 2.03 firmware is NOT bad.  There should be no issues upgrading from 1.87 to 2.03 as long as one accurately follows the upgrade instructions.  Obviously, manually rebooting the box halfway during the flashing process like you did will brick it as with any other receiver.    

Please note that a 1.87 to 2.03 upgrade does take longer than usual as the kernel is also being upgraded as well so one does need to be patient as it usually takes 5 to 10 minutes for the upgrade to fully complete.

The problem as I see it is that the kernal flash completes within a minute.  Then there is no progression for the next 5-7 minutes.  It seems like the box is frozen.  I think this led myself and others to believe that something wasn't working right.  If the kernal completed line had moved to erasing flash or programming flash, then of course I would have waited to see if it would complete

was able to telnet in.  Things were scrolling fast after last command.  Looked away for a few seconds and the telnet box was gone.   Waited 35 minutes, then rebooted holding Zero key.  Still no video.  Been trying for last hour to get internet IP recognized again.  No luck.  Kernal must be reverted as there is no orange anymore on reboot.

Catamount

Thanks for the reply!  I tried everything for a few days, but I think both partitions were corrupted.
You can close/lock this thread.

Since my box was out of warranty and I don't really require blind-scan, I flashed it with Euro firmware.
So all is good and I am happy with the result.  Thanks for the help over the years!

Catamount