jumanji said:
Just curious to know the firmware version number you have tried to flash. Educating myself. :)
Existing firmware was 3.02, allegedly responsible for the problem. Update is 3.55, hopefully the fix. So far so good.

Corazon's comment, above, was insightful. The older IDE optical drives here are accommodated via the Marvel adapter on the MB, and cannot be booted in the conventional ISO-boot-from-CD manner.

When the OCZ tech determined that he devised a simple 1G pendrive alternative. To implement it the SSD drive had to be in IDE mode.