@tonymac32 & @igor - I just wanted to follow up here as I believe I might have been mistaken regarding the SD card updates.
Although, the emmc models originally bricked right after first reboot after that 5.70 update, the SD units did not... I thought the updates had completed successfully after getting a chance to check up further today, it appears i was wrong, and the SD models did not fully update as I had thought:
This is how the 5 SD units were reporting at time of update,
Welcome to ARMBIAN 5.60 stable Debian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch) 4.4.156-rockchip
after now after update:
Welcome to ARMBIAN 5.70 stable Debian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch) 4.4.166-rockchip
where as, for the 3 emmc models, after the initial update, reboot, and fix provided by tony above, they now report:
Welcome to ARMBIAN 5.70 stable Debian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch) 4.19.14-rockchip
Is the 4.19.14 vs 4.4.166 difference expected for SD / emmc boot ? or, could this be additional update issue on the SD models that i overlooked when dealing with the dead emmc's...?