I did have one problem, however: at least the 4.9 fwupdate would only
   work when run with a vga console; on serial it failed to get input.  


heh heh heh.

i had _major_ problems using serial console until i got back
to 5.5 ... eg, the boot loader would output on the serial but
then nothing else.  a couple of weeks after everything had
been stable since the re-5.5 install, i converted to serial
console (still with the isa vga card installed) and it worked
just fine.