You are correct, none of the dtb's I tried from the release worked for me. Maybe I did not try them all!
That dtb had been downloaded and used by me about a year ago when I had made another attempt to install Armbian on my box. At the time installation process worked but the actual install was buggy.
Anyway I am happy to report that since yesterday's message, I made another attempt at installation and this time there were only minor issues whilst upgrading which were fairly easily resolved. I am sorry I cannot find the notes I took were I had recorded the actual error but I believe it was something about the system not able to register certain upgrades. These were then cleared and I had no further issues. I even went ahead and installed to EMMC with no issues whatsoever so now I don't need the SDcard anymore which I hope will improve the speed a bit as well as reliability. So far no more issues.
I have now only one question, given that I am now operating from EMMC, if in the future I would want to install a new upgrade how would I do it? Will installing from SDcard work or would it be sufficient to use the Upgrade Manager or sudo apt update; sudo apt upgrade?