Nightmare with VM111

Hi all, I have been having a total nightmare with my VM111 board. I have now tried so many different software options but still cannot get it to work.

Tried the board on 3 PC’s now, without any change, all running various versions of windows.
I am connecting into a serial port and NOT using a USB to serial adaptor.
I have tested the serial cable is straight through - It is!
I have tried various hex files and different chips - no help!
On the interface tab of Winpic I cannot get the programmer to initialize, I have set the interface type to “custom, on com port, defined by file”
Have selected the custom interface definition file as the K8048.
Have tried selecting slow mode.

All of this and I still cannot initialize the programmer and I get the warning message to tell me this.

Any idea’s before I throw this thing away and get a different programmer.

Cheers

Neil