Ed -
Would you by chance know of any villages looking for a new idiot? It would appear that I just qualified.
Here I've been studying the Mini Pro home page and the getting started material. Based on your suggestion under the FAQ, I had tried the decimille selection, and got the "AVR Dude doesn't recognize" message. So I keep digging, and asking....
Never even occured to me that the FTDI basic breakout was only putting out 3.3 volts! Use 5V, and guess what? Works just fine. And you know what? On the product description page for the 5V 16 mhz Pro mini, you know what the second sentence is? "...select 'Arduino Diecimila' within the Arduino software...".
Dumb, dumb, dumb!
Thanks for your patience.
Paul Garcia