UPDATE

After screwing around inside the casing, i unmounted the motherboard
and then remounted it, not screwing anything but the HUGE cpu heat
sink back to the case...powers up though its still shorts against the
case some where...no idea but after enough fiddling i should be able
to isolate the short...

now to see how far i can get the unit to boot up (hopefully onto the
desktop!)

cheers!

nate