Hi Brendan,
I managed to get it working at 2.30am .. argh!
Not sure what it was.
I actually changed COM ports to a lower value (from 9 to 2).
Connected; and something magical happened... it worked! Although I have no idea what happened or why it worked. I think I may have got lost in enabling not enabling settings that I lost my way troublshooting. Though I'm sure I covered everything.. maybe it was a comm issue?? weird.
I reverted back to my Keyspan and used COM 6; and it started working properly. I even changed timezones to -7 +6, etc to test, and it applied on connected just as it should.
I have nooo idea what on earth happened with the comms? Maybe some astro voodoo occuring.
I haven't had the equipment running for at least 8months. To add injury; the 13.8V power supply I used previously blew up when I turned it back on also.