Hi again,
Thanks for the interest so far HiroPro.
It's not that IE is mandatory, but I do believe they recommended it. from what i know all their server acts like a web-pages. for example if you get an error when something works wrong, you get a script error.
Hard reset I've tried. It involves holding down the reset button while you power it up, it didn't work, or at least not competely, but it did reset it to default IP adress.
I don't know how to place it in recovery mode, but I did see a 2 pin jumper on the board marked "Test". Online I can only find procedure for hard reset but no recovery.
However no socketed EEPROM, and reflow is out of the question.