Sorry to hear of your woes! But without firmware v3.3 or greater, you will have these problems.
I went through the same thing with my second (spare) REB1200 as discussed in this
post.
BTW, to read a .imp ebook right now, try using
unimp.exe to create the '.res folder' and move that folder to the CF card (using your PC's card reader), into the 'softbks' directory there.