Thanks for your help.
I downloaded 2.0 Final (once I found my serial cable!) and installed it. I ran into the same problem when downloading, so I checked my ini file.
I had been having problems with ir_translate a while back, and though I had removed that section from the file I double checked that everything in the file looked right. It wasn't in perfect shape—there were some extra Wendy filters I had stopped using a while back—but nothing really out of the ordinary.
But after using JEmplode to maintain those Wendy filters and resynching, downloading started working. So I'm not sure exactly what I did, but it's working now.
Thanks again.