ok. If I have the core and the sid connected, and the 5v connected to the sid, I get no power. if I disconnect the 5v to the sid, the PIC powers up, but LCD remains blank. if I completely disconnect the sid from the core, the pic boots up fine. don’t know what could be happening since the cable I madew to connect the 2 is the same one I always used. I tried the other 3 that I’ve also made, and I get the same result to test if the one cable is bad. all this after spending the day rewiring power and audio from a previous teardown.
did further checks. if the Vs and Vd lines on J2 of “ANY” SID module are connected to 5v, the whole unit doesn’t power on. I even tried swapping the polarity to see if I had plugged it in backwards by mistake, and it still will not power up. :-\
Leave the 12V for the SID alone for now (remove it, hide it somewhere)
Remove all ICs
Do voltage check on the core with nothing connected to it
On the SID board is should be fairly ease to see, which of the lines of J2 is Vss (GND) and Vdd (+5V) - Just trace the pins to the ground plane and the power pin of some IC. Just connect those two lines.
thanks to the help of smashtv, nILS, and bugfight in the chat, this has been resolved. had a short that was being created by leads poking through the insulation and making contact with the aluminum panel.