Thanks William!! Being in the UK, you sometimes come to the rescue while I'm sleeping :-) For that and for the excellent help you provide I thank you!
Grady, yes, MaxIm 6.21 is 5 years old, V6 is at 6.50. At least I had the problem localized to the source of the problem ha ha and I was in the midst of Thanksgiving holiday and didn't want to do research and work a tech support ticket. For reference a search for "DATE-OBS" here on the Comm Center will bring up this thread
ExposureStartTime Error Message - MaxIm putting trash into DATE-OBS
and just two hours after Chuck posted this, I had the info and answer from Dffraction.
Let us know how you get on once you update MaxIm.