Cisco 501

Do you mean "copy the PDM image from the 501 to an ftp server" ? If so then the answer is NO, there is no way to copy the PDM image or the OS image -from- the 501 to anywhere else.

Do you mean "copy the PDM image to the 501 using ftp rather than tftp" ? If so then the answer is NO, the only two protocols supported for copying images to the 501 are tftp and http.

If you mean load the PDM image into the 501, then the answer is YES, copying the PDM image into the 501 does not change the configuration of the 501. (However, perhaps upon the next reboot the configuration might be changed very slightly -- pdm has a way of adding new "pdm" configuration lines in to the configuration.)

It sounds as if you are using "upload" and "download" in the reverse sense of how most people would use them ;-) Anyhow, use the tftp-server configuration command to control the interface name and destination to use, and then go into configuration mode (config terminal) and give the command write net in order to have the PIX attempt to tftp the configuration out. (Note: for most tftp servers, the destination file must exist before you can write to it.)

No, but there does have to be a route to it, and you have to use the IP address (or a 'name' that is the IP address.)

First configure the tftp-server command. Then,

copy tftp flash:pdm