robb wrote:

Currently the only diagnostic tools at my immediate disposal are

Fluke 177 DMM, a Tek 2236 oscope and a usb/PC based all purpose
logic anal/spectrum anal/oscope

i am hopeing these will be sufficient to solve / track this
fault(s)
if low ohm meter is not terribly expensive then i'll try to get
one if it helps more than my current tools

You're missing a hammer.

That might be a lot funnier if we weren't talking about 32v on a 5v line,
but at this stage, a hammer certainly seems a viable tool.

Last time I had nearly 12v on a 5v line, (most of the board was 5v logic) I
didn't waste time diagnosing. It was faster to change all the silicon and
worry about shorted tantalums later.
Checking the semis afterwards, I found nearly half of them were stuffed, and
the other half I wouldn't have trusted anyway.

That was at nearly 12 volts. Not 32.

In your shoes, (depending on the scale of the baord and availability of
replacement boards) I'd either outright replace it, or, if this is the only
one left in existence I'd turf the silicon, and hope the EPROM or flash or
wherever the code is stored still works.

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