Thanks for the great info - I guess I did just get lucky afterall with the serial cable option I threw together.
. It worked for me, now I am wondering if there is anyone else out there it worked for. BTW - I used a Dell desktop to flash it - at least that one had the right voltages.
I certainly wanted to buy a reliable option, but we were at crunch time wanting to test autonomous modes and ship the robot ready to to.
The good news is there has been so much great information shared due to this problem that it is incentive for me to order a programmer and prototyping kit, and start playing with uControllers as a hobbiest.
I am sure it was not intentional, but the IR board problem has pushed some or many teams to dig much deeper into some technologies that would have otherwise been blackbox out of the KOPs.
I am so impressed by the FIRST "community" and the knowledge sharing.