I made it, so, yes.
most likely it was a cable issue. In the last few years, it seems like most of the cables are not any good (even from reputable brands). I have several cables and like 4 of them don't work for flashing - some of them used to work fine, but stopped randomly. Your DME wasn't really bricked, but was in safe mode - it would still be possible to re-flash it but not without fixing the root cause of the issue.