@driversat,
You may already know the following however others with similar problems but less experience may also read this thread so to explain a little further:
The GCD file is deleted in case it was corrupt and causing the partial-bricking. Also if left onboard it may try to reverse a subsequent fw flash using RGN in preboot. The 154.bin can be valuable to recover a problematic device in future and you should [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] after each fw flashing then make another [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] once you've finished recovering the device this time. That's because some fw manipulations can cause minor errors in the nonvolatile memory, even a byte or two of bad/corrupt data can lay dormant but return to cause operating problems or even sometimes even irretrievably brick a device in the future.

If you're going to use text commands ongoing (for instance to load patched fw ), the same microSD can be used with altered commands in the "update.txt" file provided you remove "last-id.bin" file from the 1947 folder created from the previous use.