it's not. that's what messed it up. the line that goes between Q9 and Q12 is fried. i resoldered it, but still no connection.
but i am curious... how come this never happened when i was doing the test with MegaStim?

Dunno.

At this point, you need to troubleshoot the board with a voltmeter and the schematic. Make sure that the CPU is getting power.

where would i find the schematics for this? i thought they'd be proprietary. and i already checked the "fried line" for continuity from beginning to end, and it checks out. i also went through the whole thing to make sure there weren't any other breaks and it's fine.

Find the V3.0 schematics here:

V3 Main Board

A solder it yourself kit with the schematics hidden would make things pretty difficult. The MSPNP adapter board schematics are proprietary, but all the build it yourself schematics are available online, and even most of the SMD stuff is shown online.

ok, i got told to reload the firmware by the MS guys... but didn't get a link, got asked what version i was running, didn't know... lol.
i did tell them it was for a '91 miata, still waiting reply.
do we use a specific firmware for our cars? if so, does anyone have one.
my mods are listed on my sig, in case that makes a difference.
thanks so much guys.

For the time being, you can use any old firmware to test with. Here is the latest HiRez code: http://ys3al35l.googlepages.com/hr_11c2.zip Don't even bother with EasyTherm for the moment, just use the included downloader.

ok, tried to burn the code and i get "expected reply to get ", but instead got "" " this is what i got when i tried to run "dowbload firmware" like i read on braineak's thread.
i'm really at a loss here. need major help!!!!

Sounds like you need to put a boot jumper in and re download the firmware to the ecu.

it still won't let me. i even soldered a piece of jumper and no go. keeps giving me an error message and then the window closes.
can someone in fl help me with this?