2nd - No need for the Talisman, just use the stock Netgear firmware web interface to upgrade directly to the dd-wrt.v24-11575_NEWD_mini_wnr834bv2.chk file that you just downloded.
3rd - After the successfull load of the mini version of the BIOS, you can then use the DD-WRT web interface to upgrade to any STD version of the DD-WRT BIOS...although, you may just be happy with the mini version. (DO NOT TRY TO LOAD A MEGA VERSION!) NOTE: for this DD-WRT BIOS update, as well as subsequent updates, there is a setting on the BIOS upgrade page to clear out the NVRAM with the update...which makes the 30-30-30 reset unnecessary.
Just wanted to add to this in case anyone else was having a problem. Also not sure if you want to add this to the wiki. But I was having a bear with this. I had the original NetGear FW (v WNR834B Firmware Version 1.0.3.8 - http://support.netgear.com/app/products/model/a_id/2616). Everytime I tried to load the IMG file I would get a page could not be displayed error and the IMG file would not load. Tried through web gui and tftp. tftp would time out and it would not load. By updating the NetGear FW to the newest ver from NetGear (v WNR834B Firmware Version 1.0.4.2 http://support.netgear.com/app/products/model/a_id/2616) I was able to upload the IMG file from Simri without any problems. No power cycling no hard reset 30-30-30. DDWRT came right up and then I was able to load the bin file I wanted. Went with the dd-wrt.v24_nokaid_generic.bin FW. So far everything looks fine. Lights on the NetGear router are all the correct colors. Im going to set it up as a repeater bridge with a Linksys WRT310N following these instructions http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Repeater_Bridge.
***UPDATE***
Well after setting up the repeater bridge everything is working fine for the last hour. Lights on NetGear are normal. I can plug a machine in to any of the ports (including the wan port step 7 Assign WAN Port to Switch : Optionally enable this to use the WAN port as another LAN port). So now I have 5 lan ports instead of 4. Wireless connection to the primary and secondary wifi are working great as well. Thanks guys for all the great work.