I get persistent failure to write to radio on an FT-60 with Chirp 0.1.12 on Ubuntu 11.04.
Does it ever work, or just often fail? Have you tried the latest daily version?
I have found that the FT-60 seems to be extremely sensitive to the position of the programming cable plug. On all of the FT-60s I have programmed (and I've done quite a few), I had to exert lateral pressure on the plug in one direction to get it to make consistent contact. Otherwise, I would get sporadic communication while writing. Any chance this is your issue?
The error you're hitting means that CHIRP wrote the "clone start" header and the radio did not ack it. If the radio immediately shows "error" on the screen, then it means the radio is seeing *something* but not what it expects (perhaps due to a faulty connection). If it doesn't immediately go to error, then it means no communication is occurring.