Tim at Yaesu tech support says that Chirp "burns out" EEPROMS on Yaesu radios. He says that results in the radios locking up. It was not clear whether he was saying that the EEPROM was destroyed or just programmed into a state that the radio would no longer work. I'm guessing that this might have been a problem during Chirp development and is no longer the case. I see that there are several steps involved in programming the Yaesu radios with Chirp. Does failure to follow the steps precisely create a risk to the usability of the radio? Sorry if this has been discussed before.
Tim assures me that he makes no money by recommending RT Systems stuff.
I sure appreciate the universality of Chirp.... support of multiple computing platforms (Mac in particular!), multiple radios! The value is huge since what holds back many beginners is the difficulty of programming in the channels!