I've been playing with this for a few hours now, and I finally figured out my issue. Thought I'd post to help someone with the same issue.
I have two WNR1000v2 routers that I've collected @ garage sales recently, and have been unable to do anything use with them until now.
I was trying to use tftp, as instructed in the gist here: https://gist.github.com/SaltwaterC/ef49c8a4df81c8896153 with no success. From everything I can observe, what I have is a pair of WNR1000v2 routers, with no mention whatsoever of "VC". The problem is that I let the auto check updater update them to version 1.2.2.73 (I think), and everything in the gist mentions v1.1.x.x...
what I would get was basically the same output as posted by jlpapple above. finally I found a post somewhere that mentioned doing a 30-30-30 reset, and then trying the tftp put operation. That would get me to uploading the firmware, but it would fail every time, with the green light blinking..
I ended up googling a bit, and finding v1.2.2.56 of the firmware. I figured I'd see if that would upload, and then figure out the difference between the two, and do some hacking... what I failed to notice (thank you a few trader joe's 9% beers) was tt v1.2.2.256 firmware had a "VC" in it.. but it worked..
so... hoping that no fuzzy little kittens would actually die, I decided to try and tftp the "-vc" version of the firmware... and it worked!
I now have two working routers running barrier breaker.
hope this helps someone.