You cannot flash a T87A with T87 software because the T87A boot loader requires proper signatures to even accept the download. That, and the T87A's main OS boot location is different than the the T87 OSes. Yes, the T87A flash images are ~3MB, that's just because they optimized the T87A boot loader to allow less than 4MB to be downloaded, whereas the T87 boot loader is more primitive.
But Ross is wrong about the CPU. They are the same. And it is actually possible to interchange T87 and T87A software, if you replace the boot loader, along with other certain changes.