loading LinuxCNC on old smithy 1240

I have an old Smithy 1240, I want to load the latest, or at least more recent version of LinuxCNC. I am very new to this, so apologies if this is too dumb a question. My Smithy 1240 currently runs 2.5.4 and everything works fine, but I want to add a usb pendant and it doesn't look like it will work , I put in a new drive and loaded the latest version, and LinuxCNC wont start, it gives an error that it cannot find firmware hm2/5i20/sssvst2_2_4_v31.bit. My assumption is there is a configuration that needs to be done, but I have no info on the machine configuration.
So I guess my questions are:
A: Can the SW be updated while saving the current configuration?
B: Can someone point me to info on how to configure the software if A: is not possible?
C: Does someone have this working and is willing to send me a working / configured copy of it?

as a first step, I would copy the existing firmware file and configuration files
from the original hard drive and transfer them to the new installation drive

There is a built-in utility to update configuration files (from 2.7 to 2.8/2.9) but I am not sure if it works on 2.5.X version files

Can you point me to where those files are, I had copied the file it was barking about, but it didn't seem to help

The firmware file should be in

/lib/firmware/hm2/5i20/

You will need to duplicate this directory on the new installation disk

The hal and ini files should be in

~/linuxcnc/configs

Thank you, I will try that

OK, I moved the files and now I get a new error relating to 1240combined.hal max current. I ran latency test as it said, but I didn't see it matter. Attached are the error and section from 1240combined.hal file

Is the 8I20 powered?

I would have to say yes, if I swap in the disk with the old version SW it works fine

Can you try commenting out that line (line 86) in the hal file
and trying to start LinuxCNC again.

I think possibly some pin names changed over the years

I tried that, then I commented the next 3 lines that failed.
#    setp hm2_5i20.0.stepgen.03.position-scale  [AXIS_3]SCALE
#    setp hm2_5i20.0.stepgen.03.maxaccel        [AXIS_3]STEPGEN_MAXACCEL
#    setp hm2_5i20.0.stepgen.03.maxvel          [AXIS_3]STEPGEN_MAXVEL
then it gave following error
./1240combined.hal:191: Pin 'hm2_5i20.0.8i20.0.0.amp_enable' does not exist
I feel like it is missing something and I will be chasing the errors all the way down.