Solved it
And a word or three on trouble shooting and new cables.
The S4 has been with one of the volunteers for a while and he was complaining the S4 would not talk to his computer with either Veloware or the Com to File utlity. This fellow is a computer geek so i figured he had that part right and in a short few minutes it looked like he did.
I took the S4 home and with a new serial cable I had just made it did not work but My Timy did so the serial port worked but I assumed the S4 was broken and a few paniked moments and a call to Montreal too. I have also been building a Tido like break out box. I get all the photo cell outputs, the channel 0 to 8 inputs with test switches and 2 serial ports.
Now the timy is not talking to the computer with my new serial cable. OOPS check serial cable and sure enough my Bad Parity error is fixed with a wire swap.
Lesson 1 never assume you did it right, Don't assume the old serial cable is hooped and NEVER TRUST A NERD.
The original problem was reported as a hooped serial cable cause it looked kinked. Wrong Com port!!! The nerd was using Com 2 and had the cable plugged in to Com1.
A comedy of errors and assumptions but thankfully fixed before the race has started.
I am so Emabarrassed.