Hi Pete,
Please note that the comment of mine that you quote was intended to be in reference to the product(s) (the Baofeng UV-B5 and cable) I bought and not in reference to CHIRP. I'm sorry that my intention in that regard was not clear. It certainly seemed from what I knew at the time that the problem was with the hardware, and I thought that that was clear from my comments.
So Hooray! All is not lost! At least it seems I have not irreparably damaged the radio as I had feared.
But it does seem that a bug fix of CHIRP regarding the problem is in order. However, I have not checked whether this problem is already regarded as a bug that needs fixing.
Anyway, I thought folks would like to know in case anyone else is puzzled by this sort of problem.