Thanks vi_, but as I mentioned - I flashed my device numerous times before - including the eMMC - and I know I shouldn't use the '-R' option when flashing the eMMC so of course I didn't
The steps you mentioned, from 1 to 6 - thats EXACTLY what I did (since I've never had this problem I described in my first post here, I just wanted to make sure I'll take no chances this time) and everything worked great - and yet, the results are laying in front of you - my device won't boot

P.s, when you write "3. Setup flasher to flash kernel, leave at 'waiting for USB device prompt'", by "flash kernel" you mean flash the firmware, right?