Well, I just upgraded to VMware Workstation Pro 17.5.0 build-22583795 and I also updated the software and kernel in the Linux Mint 21.1 VM. At first I successfully completed a 9600bps Kermit transfer to one of my HP48GXs. Then, I tried it again and the transfer failed in the same was as described in my original post -- the Intel NUC running Linux Mint 19.2 x64 still has *no* problems - there's something wrong with VMWare.

Also, there's another symptom : VMWare will randomly lock up, usually when all the VMs are paused or powered off, and I'll have to kill the VMWare VMX process which will generate an error dialog that reads as follows :

"Transport (VMDB) error -14: Pipe connection has been broken."

Any help would be appreciated.

jdb2