It you on your end. It is a problem with your programming cable. Either it does not have a compatible device driver installed and/or it is not fully connected with the radio.
It would be nice to know...
If you are running Big Sur, the device drivers have not caught up with the OS yet. You may have to wait until the chip vendor has released a compatible driver for the chip in your programming cable.
If you have Cataline or earlier, then you can continue.
- the result of running "/dev/cu*" (without quotes) in terminal
This command can be used to determine which USB-toSerial chip is inside the USB end of your programming cable (see the guide "here":https://www.miklor.com/COM/UV_DriversMAC.php).
If the result is something like this
/dev/cu.usbserial-1410
Then the chip in your programming cable is a Prolific type chip. Nearly all chips in programming cables that identify themselves to the OS as a Prolific chip are unauthorized copies. The driver provided from the Prolific company is intentionally incompatible with unauthorized copies. You will have to purchase a "3rd party driver":https://www.mac-usb-serial.com/ like I did to make the programming cable work with macOS.
The guide mentioned above will also help you determine if the chip in your programming cable is from any of the other common chip vendors (FTDI, Silicon Labs, WCH, etc).
Now that the driver is out-of-the-way, it is time to move on to the connection between the programming cable and the radio.
If the radio end of the programming cable has a connector that has a shell that extends past the face that the connector pins stick out of (see "MayNeedModifiedToFitProperly.jpg"). The shell of the connector doesn't allow it to fit the radio properly. The pins contact the connector of the radio in between the circular pads that they are supposed to contact and therefor provides not connection between the connector and radio. Go ahead, try it. Leave the connector disconnected with the radio and try a download. The error message will be exactly the same. What I had to do is file of the end of the tab (the thingy that engages the recessed notch in the radio) enough that it allow the connector to move higher up on the side of the radio to allow the pins of the connector to line up with the correct pads of the radio's connector. The programming cables that I have like this are from Baofeng and BlueMax49ers.
There is a programming cable with a slightly different connector that work better for this kind of speaker/mic connector. It has a shell that is flush with the face that the connector pins stick out of (see "ShouldWorkAs-Is.jpg"). If programming cables like this from Retevis and Baofeng.
Once you get you driver and/or connector issues sorted out, CHIRP will work fine.
Jim KC9HI
