I was able to run over to Ham Radio Outlet in Sunnyvale today at lunch and asked if they had any ideas.  We were going to try another cable (start with the cheapest link in the chain right?) but they only had default Kenwood cables and Mark has my serial adapter.  So… we tried my cable and laptop with the demo model in the case… and as I expected, it worked just perfectly.

So now we knew it was my radio, and after learning they don’t do any repairs in the shop, we went ahead and filled out the paperwork and they’ll ship it off to Kenwood since it’s still under warranty.  I asked if they had any estimates on how long it would take, and he simply said they’d call when it came in.

I may grab my old radio back from Mark this weekend if we meet up so I don’t have to give up this radio hobby cold turkey ;-)