Nortel Secure Router 1004

 I have 4 Nortel Secure Routers with 4 ports active.  When i boot up all 4 routers i receive a bunch of CHKSUM errors.  And then an attempt is made to fix all the bad sectors on flash.  When all is finished it shows NO WAN INTERFACES AVALIABLE and System Validation Error.  It appears i have corrupted flash.  But on all 4 routers?  Is this a common issuse with these?  The T1000.Z and the T1000.bin file are both present.  I have also tried to boot via TFTP and overwrite both these files using the download command.  Nortel Tech support was no help, and im thinking i can fix this issue by using some sort of activation or software upgrade key. These routers were all new in the box.  I have also heard something about the battery could go bad if they sit for a while, but i dont see how a dead battery causes the flash to go corrupt.  Formatting the flash completey resolves the CHKSUM errors but when i push the new flash to them, the system serial does not initialze and the T1 interface module does not seem to load.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.