Hi Bob... actually i realized about five minutes after posting that was the thermistor, though i missed it because i was working rather slavishly from Jed's spreadsheet which didnt seem to have it on there.
i DO have a scope actually. a lovely Tek 2445A. however I'm a bit intimidated about troubleshooting logic circuits and signals....ive only ever used it for analogue audio stuff really... so theres more to learn for me.
And i DID get some more functioning 5v test points on the board though still not TP1 which is zero... and TP2 is a bit low at 4.1v or thereabouts. I am a bit confused as the manual uses a totally different language like 'TP-J7' and i am not sure how they correspond to the board ...