SOLVED!

So I did some more research and came across a post that instructed the OP to update his Arduino Desktop to the latest version.  Since the developer of the Retro Chip Tester includes a copy of the avrdude.conf file, I figured I would try his script with the latest version of that conf file and voila, it worked.  Did not see any errors at all.

Hope this helps anyone else that have the same problem.