OMG!!! I was about to pack it in, but decided to take
@crjackson2134's advice to be stubborn, and just keep trying. Well after another 5 or 6 tries with no luck and up to 3 start-stop cycles, I said, what the hell, one last time, I was on hold on the phone anyway, so I hit the power button, held it and lo and behold, after about 15-20 seconds the LED starts flashing, loud tone (never sounded so good before), and it went into firmware programming mode! I fired up ROMTool and installed
@tsialex's patched 138.0.0.0.0 rom file. Flashing took 30-40 secs, reboot, and I'm on 130.0.0.0.0 in Sierra, and Mojave PB from today. Flashed 7950 (XFX HD 7950 single fan model) works great and running at 5.0GT/s.
I want to thank everyone on this forum for being so willing to jump in to help and offer suggestions, but a special Thank You! to
@tsialex for responding so quickly and being so willing to give his time to look at my ROM and patching it. You all are incredible! There was not one single condescending reply.
If any one of you is ever in Denver, please do ping me... I'd love to buy you all a beer or 3!