Hi,
the failed patch attempts are probably because you tried to apply it to a different version than r1782. Since I have committed the patch now anyway this should be no issue anymore anyway for your testing.
But you got a more severe problem. The logs you sent show that the flash chip does not always react to the commands flashrom sends to it. All lines in the logs containing 'probe_spi_rdid_generic' should end with 'probe_spi_rdid_generic: id1 0x8c, id2 0x2016' but quite often flashrom reads a constant 'high' (0xFF...) instead of the correct IDs. This might be due to bad cabling or something else interfering on the SPI bus (e.g. the router SoC might be powered through your programmer and tries to fetch its bootcode from the flash). You could work around the latter by lifting the VCC pin of the flash chip from the board (unsoldering it) or holding the SoC in reset somehow. See also http://flashrom.org/ISP