I was having the same problem, it is taking 17 minutes and is barely above 50%. But if we are not able to get a a laptop with a built in serial , are any other conection converters usefull? The laptop has only a few things but the only other thing that might be usefull is some type of connection that I don't know its name so I'll make it on here

somewhat well it looks like a serial port (female) with 3 rows of 5 holes kinda like this if you can under stand it. Ok I'm an idiot so I couldn't find it

but This should be enough to figure out what I mean.
its a little more compact....
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Thanks