gtm32 MINI S board

[Trumagic]

hopefully i can find some help on here because after 3 months i havent been able to fix my problem.
I unfortunately had to replace my A30 control board, unlike most A30 that have the GTM32 PRO all 3 of my A30 printers have the GTM32 MINI S board. in the past updating the firmware on these boards was painless and straight forward. ive done it a few times as well as altering esteps etc with the various uploaders. no problems there.

my problem is that i have now got a new board to replace the old one and it seems to have no firmware on it, no bootloader on it, nothing!
i have had 3 of these replacment boards now. each time i was told that the firmware is already loaded on and each time it has not been. i have plugged the boards into the printer and i get nothing, the screen powers up fine and i can scroll through menus, but i cant control temperature nor can i manually move any of the extruders, and upon looking at the firmware version in the about section its all blank.

the next thing is to the update the firmware, but in doing so by following the instructions online, which is what i have done in the past with great success, i always get a timeout error, telling me that i must be using the wrong port. there is only one port available and i get the standard windows ting when i plug the printer into my laptop and it pops up saying the port is available. but i cannot load any firmware onto this board.

i have seen tutorials on how to upload the bootloaders for the A30 but none of them show the GTM32 MINI S board wich is different to the GTM32 PRO

if anyone can help me fix this problem im having or give me some insight as to why i cannot upload firmware to this board i would be eternally greatful, because no one at geeetech seem to know why.....in fact i had one message asking me why i even needed to upload firmware to it in the first place