Fascinate gets to download mode and splash (boot loop) but not recovery mode

The device is a Samsung Fascinate. I had MIUI working for about a year, tried installing Cyanogen-mod today. The install got stuck in the CM splash screen, so I recovered the MIUI backup. On reboot (after recovering), it got stuck in the MIUI splash. It's in a soft brick right now. It boots into a) download mode or b) the MIUI splash screen then gets stuck. It will not boot into recovery mode using the up/down button combo at all. The down button alone boots it into download mode. I have Ubuntu on one of my PC's (physical not virtual) but this fails to recognize the device. Is is possible that the recovered image of MIUI overwrote the recovery partition so that it doesn't work now? How would you recover this to a working state? I'm new to fixing phones, and brand new to this site but am trying to revive this once-great Android. This is my main phone. Thanks for reading, please help.