Also, I just attempted to use Tony's upload tool (which appears to be similar to the download tool. Different name tho,

And an additional parameter to spec the COM port, and it fixes the ReadByte bug.

and it says everything is transferred fine, but the system does not load.

The problem appears to be in the file you sent to the Empeg, not in the uploading software. Perhaps it was downloaded from the web wrong? Did it come in the form of a zip or a tar.gz that you unzipped, or was it raw? Sometimes ASCII stuff gets inserted into downloads that aren't zips...

___________
Tony Fabris