Ok got the laptop from neighbor and was able to add it on my little home network.
I then downloaded Mozilla Thunderbird and then added my second Cox e-mail account (since it's small and rarely used) after the setup I tried sending a test messg to my gmail account and Guess what it failed.... with the same exact error messg.
Wow ! I was betting it would have worked though.

Soo at this point I'm thinking the trusted certificates are somehow FUBAR! ...it's the only thing left that I can think of since receiving e-mail doesn't require them in the same way as it does to send mail out.
The only other thing I can think of is something old school like the storage PST file is corrupted. I seem to recall there is a tool that will repair the PST file but doesn't work if the pst is over a certain amount. I do have a bunch of mail going back a few yrs.

As for setting it up as a Pop account I don't think they allow for that anymore.

I also contacted Cox help through twitter and they say they have my ticket sent over to some server people, and I should expect a call from them but that was two days ago. I'm getting quite fed up with cox support,