Now the tricky stuff

Well, my package arrived from SmashTV with my MB_6582 baseboard and CS Board and also the Core, SID and DIN module kits, so a-soldering I will go.
Soldered together the core kit pretty quick, took about an hour and a 1/2, only annoyance was that one of the resistors in the kit was wrong. I had an extra 2.2k ohm and was a 1k ohm short, so I had to buy one from Jaycar. I tried Dick Smith Electronics, but they have all thier resistors in bins that are labeled with the colour bands, not the values and they dont have a guide there. Idiots.

Also soldered up the SID and DIN kitt, they were even quicker, did the both of them in about an hour and a halk, getting pretty good at soldering, all of the solder work is nice and clean and pretty uniform.

Also, soldered up a ribon cable for the LCD so I can see if I can get anything out of this badboy.
So hooked the core up to the optimised power supply, which is putting 5.12 volts out, checked the voltage on the IC sockets for the PIC and for the octocoupler andwas only getting 3v. With some investigation I foudn that I have to remove the voltage regulator from the Core module if I am using the optimised power supply. Did that and soldered a bridge between the 1st and 3rd pins.

Now Im getting a bit better, but still only just over 4 volts. Not too sure whats going on here but figutred that too low a voltage cant kill anything so thought Id give it a go.
Popped the PIC and the octocoupler in the IC sockets, connected the power supply and the LCD aaaaaaaand...... nothing....

I dont have a midi cable to connect to MIOS studio so I cant tell if the core just isnt booting or if there is soemthing wrong with the screen. I have just gone over and over the schematic and thankfully IM using rainbow ribbon so its reasonably easy to identify which wire is which. As far as I can see I have got the LCD wired up perfectly fine. I will double check the datasheet to make sure that the pin out on the LCD matches standatd but Im pretty sure it does seeing as its a Crystalfontz one.

Could also be that the voltage is just oo low, I am going to have to ask the great oracles of nILS, wilba and SmashTV on the midibox chat server.
Will get some midi cables today and then at least I can see if the Core is booting up.