Hi, hamgray, I'm not a hardware guy, so I can't say anything valuable concerning that ribbon.
The cure firmware seems to be ok, but it's very old. I still have an idea that your device is newer that the firmware and, therefore, it's not fully supported. So, maybe the screen is white because the LCD is unknown to the bootloader? Alexander2010 says that he's already seen exactly this problem (2x5W/5.00 cure/white screen), and the devices could still be flashed in pre-boot mode if connected to the PC. But looks like it's not your case, because you don't rely on the picture of the screen while entering pre-boot mode as I understand from the first message from here: [Only registered and activated users can see links. ]
So, we can continue experimenting after you've fixed the ribbon.