Now I know what nighly builds are
And yes, I'm using the workaround and it works just fine 
BTW: I suspect this issue completely fooled me into thinking my R4 was faulty. Because of the way I use the IDE I'm swapping in and out a lot. Often, thinking I had selected the R4 but the comms would fail in a seemingly intermittent way (now I know I had not really selected the R4) . I'll do some checking but if this proves correct then
(1) I'll update my other post, and
(2) Hooray! (maybe) my R4 hasn't died after all.