This is more of a fun excersise than a plan to make a lot of money.
On a seperate thought, i hear the Icarus protocol is serial-based, but i can't find any documentation on it.
Icarus?
None of the current hardware or firmware for the miners is open source, its all secret and protected by the manufacturers which is probably why you can't find any useful information.
You may find something on FPGA in the icarus link (above) and some
FPGA mining code to browse.