USB-Serial converters work fine if you use Tony's Logo Editor for kernel uploads, or if you use the Linux download.c program for them. But the Windows emplode/upgrade tools probably don't work well with them.

The ethernet-based upgrader tool is a faster way to install upgrades on machines that have a Hijack kernel -- and no serial port is required for that.

But it sounds as if you have a strategy, so run with it!

Meanwhile.. I suppose we ought to patch emplode (or is there a separate .upgrade program?) to fix the serial port bugs it has.

The problem with USB serial converters, is that they have to batch characters together into packets. The delays they introduce while collecting enough data for a packet are what confuses Emplode/tools -- those tools were written to assume no such delays. So the bug is in the tools, not the USB serial dongles, but it's a problem regardless.

If the Emplode/tools were not closed-source software, we could easily fix them. But alas..