Linksys E8450 Activation of network connection failed

Hello to all:
Quick question..
I have a Linksys E8450 which has been converted to UBI long long ago.
Maybe with Version 1.1. Has been updated to fix/prevent OKD.
Has run great on many many (over 50 easy) snapshots for a very long time.
This last time I flashed I now get "Activation of network connection failed".
Tried a hard reset. No change.
Booted into recovery and flashed. No change.
Downloaded the smallest sysupgrade 'no luci' and flashed.
openwrt-mediatek-mt7622-linksys_e8450-ubi-squashfs-sysupgrade.itb
no change
I can get into recovery and flash and it does act like a normal flash sequence is happening.
I get a normal series of lights and then a normal automatic reboot on completion
and once it reboots I have a normal power light and a normal blinking lan light.
But it just responds with "Activation of network connection failed"

I done ping scans 192.168.1.1-192.168.1.254 and 10.0.0.1-10.0.0.254 and 10.1.1.1-10.1.1.254 all with no discovery.

Could I have just worn this thing out with to many flashes?
I have four of these running and never had one do this.
When in recovery I can ssh into the unit but I don't think
that gets me anywhere while I'm recovery does it?
..I don't think this is kiss of death.
..I applied the fix when it was published and it went well.

Many thanks for anyone's opinion.
Maybe I should just start digging a little square hole with a marker that reads "Here lies too many flashes"

seen the upgrade warning/guide on https://openwrt.org/toh/linksys/e8450 ?

I don't think that pertains to this situation. This unit has been on kernel 6.xx ever since it was made available thru snapshots. It has lived as a node in a mesh setup. If owut showed alot of packages needed updating I would flash it along with three others. This one just had an event during flash. The other three were fine. The only path for repair now is to flash something through recovery if there is such a repair or open it up for a serial connection if there is a repair that way. I have done the serial setup a few times but I know i'm not very good at it for lack of practice. It seems pretty clear that once converted to ubi one should not flash the installer again so I can't try that. I'm not concerned about returning to OEM linksys firmware. If I can't OpenWrt I will just throw it away.