Success!
After emailing support and getting essentially the same response, I dug deep into the pile of old bits and pieces that I have, and found a windows 7 laptop. Surprisingly it still booted, so I copied the firmware updater onto it, ran it, connected the blueboard, held down the "D" key while I turned it on, clicked Search, and then update.
After a disconcerting number of bings and bongs as it connected and disconnected from windows, and a rather long wait for the progress bar to complete, I finally got a green "Completed" message.
Turned off the blueboard, put the batteries back in and turned in on, and lo and behold, the "A" light flashes briefly (to indicate that it's operating in native mode) and I'm back in business.
For the record, here was the last email I received from support:
Connect the Blueboard, check Windows Explorer it should appear as a removable drive.
When you can, try the following and let us know your results. These steps should help get this Firmware updated for you.
1. Go into the Windows Task Manager on the Services tab.
2. Click on the "Services" or "Open Services" button.
3. Right click on the "Windows Search" service and stop it (if it's running).
4. Right click on the "Windows Search" service again and click on "Properties".
5. As "Startup Type" select "Disabled" (take note of the original setting so you can restore it later). Make sure that the service is now disabled and stopped.
6. Right click on the updater executable and run it as administrator.
7. Turn on your BlueBoard while holding down the "D" pad and proceed normally with the update. An explorer window might open and close repeatedly when connecting the BlueBoard and during the update, do not click inside it.
8. If the update succeeded and the BlueBoard works, go back to Services and restore the original setting for "Startup Type".
It appears that the firmware updater doesn't work on Windows 10, no matter what options you try. I'd try running it on an older machine, or maybe use a VM like VirtualBox or VMWare Player to get a Windows 7/8 environment.
Regards
Paul.
