flash drive timing out, can't boot vmlinuz/initrd (coreboot payload)

[The Gluglug]

I am trying to boot a USB flash drive in GRUB2, when used as a payload 
for coreboot.
This is on a Lenovo Thinkpad X60.

I am using this config to boot from a Trisquel live USB (the config in 
correct; it has worked on occasion):
menuentry 'Boot Trisquel USB' {
    linux (usb0)/casper/vmlinuz boot=casper noprompt noeject idle=halt
    initrd (usb0)/casper/initrd
}

Sometimes, the linux line fails, and I am taken back to grub menu.
Other times, the linux line works, but the initrd line fails (in this 
case, it boots the kernel but it panics)
Sometimes both lines work, and I am able to boot into a Trisquel live 
usb sucessfully - very rarely.
Regardless, when one of the 2 above is true (either vmlinuz and/or 
initrd fails to load), I get this message:
error: USB Mass Storage request failed

Premise: me and phcoder think its a bad/slow USB drive.

Here are the attempted fixes (reposted so that they never expire):
http://paste.debian.net/70166/
After this, I got the message:
error: USB Mass Storage request failed (USB Error 7).

Then I tried this (reposted to never expire):
http://paste.debian.net/70171/
(increase timeout from 1 second to 10 seconds)

This changed nothing, so then this fix was attempted (after reverting 
the patches above):
http://paste.debian.net/70174/

After this change, USB booting worked successfully 3 times, but then 
started failing again with these errors:
error: USB Mass Storage stalled

Then this fix was attempted (after reverting the above):
http://paste.debian.net/70186/

This also changed nothing.


What other approaches could be taken to resolve this issue?