Some of you know I've had some troubles...
Okay, I have well and truly "buttered my toast" - gone so far as to rewire everything (changing parts out for different parts as well), including the battery, piece by piece, to eliminate possibilities one by one. There remains exactly one thing I haven't tried yet, and that's setting the configs to momentary and hooking a momentary up to the ignition switch pads. I suspect I may have damaged the "number one" pad in my initial soldering, based on everything I've done so far, but I lack the three extra arms I'd need to hold the multimeter and card :D
More updates, more helpful hints...
These are all some GREAT things I'm adding to the CF Troubleshooting thread, due to it being discussed in a different thread:
* SD CARDS Use only quality brands for SD (AVOID "PNY")... Kingston and Sandisk are two good examples
* BATT CELLS Try a fresh or "known to be good" set of battery cells... believe me--it's happened to me before, and I chased it all over the place until trying such a simple thing.
* XP FILE TWEAKS Don't allow windows to make any special "check marks" on the files (as in 'ready for archive' or whatever)
* XP FILE STUFF, cont. Look out for extra "hidden" files like "thumbs.db" sneaking in there
* HDD CLEANING Defrag your hard drive, because if it's REALLY bad... you could have some copy issues when going to the SD
* TOO MANY FILES!! Do NOT let more files than are supposed to be there get into your directories
* Watch for the extra text files in Erv's default settings
* When in doubt, use my compendium CD... I'm 99.8% positive everything on it is spot on
* Copy all files "en masse" to the SD. If problems occur, check to be certain that the files themselves don't have some kind of CRC error (for example, you downloaded it partially from a site)
* When all else fails, go back to the basics and try the DEFAULT packages with no frills. If this STILL doesn't work--now you can be fairly certain you have some bigger problems