RBR50 router appears to be bricked after factory reset

I am passing on my RBR50 and 3 satellites to a relative, so I performed a factory reset on all of the devices in preparation for that.  When trying to install them in the new house, though, I cannot get anything other than a flashing white ring on the RBR50.  It is not pulsing...just flashing.  I have tried performing another reset and all of the power/wait/reset items that I have found online in the various forums and nothing has worked.  I even left it powered up for a few hours -- nothing but white flashing.  Can't see if from the app or the network, in general.

I then moved on to the firmware update directly connected to my laptop and that is a no-go either.  I set my ethernet adapter to ip 192.168.1.10 / mask 255.255.255.0 / gw 192.168.1.1 and performed the Orbi reset steps again.  (Note: During a reset, mine flashes amber 5 times then returns to green solid.  I've seen many posts/docs saying that I need to wait for 10 flashes, but it never makes it to 10 before returning to solid green.)  On my laptop, my ethernet connection shows "Unidentified network" after "Attempting to authenticate" and I cannot ping 192.168.1.1, so I cannot upload the firmware.  I have tried all 3 ethernet ports on the RBR50 and all do the same thing.  Unfortunately, this means that I can't provide any information regarding what firmware it is currently running...auto-updates were on, so who knows.  

Is there ANY method that someone has come up with to access this device and see what is going on?  I am an IT professional, well versed in Linux, so if there is anything there that someone has found, I'm willing to try it.  Just pains me to see something this expensive turn into a paper weight.