I’m having a similar problem with setting up my v1.0 spark core. I’ve attempted your steps from the other thread without success. I get all the way to getting a breathing cyan LED but the core cannot be claimed to my account. It’s been previously claimed and I believe I’ve released it.
I’m on OSX, with particle-cli v1.8.3. Here’s a dump of my console-based attempts…
I’m not really sure where to go from here.