VA0 Bad flash

[a500plus]

Hello All,

I have a JPN VA0
Games like Sonic adventure do not work, the date will not stay (it has a new tested battery).
DC check disk fails instantly to a red screen. I do not have black swirl, but I understand I have a very early DC where i think region is kept on bios.

The first guide i found was dragoncity using retro dream. No version of retro dream will boot.
V2 hangs on splash => checking harddrive
v3 hangs on splash
I tried all versions of Dreamshell, they all hang on "G1-ata" during initial load, until i go all the way back to 4rc1 = which loads fine. 4 beta also loads ok. This DC has never been modded. I have an SD adapter.

After much testing I strongly think the flash is corrupt. I read a lot here and other forums & soldered 12v => R512 and "flashrom_tool.bin" I found on here reports that it is RW

I have tried restoring backup from VMU -> no change via region changer 1.5
I have tried making LUA script on dreamshell 4RC1
os.execute("flashrom -write 0 131072 /sd/DS/shared/flash/dcjp_ntsc.bin")
flashrom errors that it can not open 131072

Im running out of ideas.

Thanks