Okay! Good news! Swapping the null modem for a straight through cable solved my problem. All day yesterday, trying everything down to probing each pin on the old cable to make sure it was good, and all I needed was a different cable! Thank you for getting responding so quickly and helping to end my disappointment and frustation!

So I am up and running FC v.3! I guess it might run v4, but I haven't tried it yet. I'm just happy to not be stuck with v1. Now I have a lot of learning to do to figure out how to start writing g-code.