All about the Roland Jupiter-series

I just got my MKS-80 and programmer today.  Needless to say I 
immediately started playing with it and I think I've found some 
problems.  I notice that when using the programmer,  the edits aren't 
smooth.  If I sweep, say the filter freq or LFO rate,  I get very 
noticable stepping.  I can see the values jumping around as I move ANY 
knob or slider.  I can start at 0 and slide up about 1/4 of the length 
before it will finally jump to about 17 or so,  etc etc...

The cable the person sent to me seems to be makeshift. It's a radioshack 
      cat5 cable with 6 pin connectors on the ends, wrapped with 
electrical tape.  Since I never owned one, I dunno if this is the norm 
or not.

So,  is this the normal function of the programmer, or is it possible I 
have a bad cable,  or maybe even a bad MKS-80??

Is there somewhere I can get a working cable if that is the issue? 
Please help... thanks.

Robert