ok, before reading any of these posts, i went out to check voltage on the halls.
oops, the neighbor borrowed it a couple days ago. ran over to get it. noted with a sigh that it was ON when his wife handed it to me...
so i check the halls, first for voltage across black/red. NOTHING! now that's odd. check both sides of connector. controller is hooked up and ON. weird.
well, i had fixed up lyen controller handy, and i was wanting to try it anyway. the board wasn't screwed in, but that shouldn't matter, just wanted to test it.
BOOM. UNGODLY LIGHT EMANATING FROM THE BOX. OR GODLY, actually:

i pulled it apart. no it wasn't my cap job. the board shorted against the case, making a nice hole in it.
ok, learned a lesson there. let's put that aside to mail to amberwolf. :lol:
now back to my halls. why aren't i getting voltage. the neighbor was checking AC. but i'd switched it back to DC. i wonder if i get voltage on the main pack.
BOOM. PLASMA WOOOHHHOOO!

no pain at all on the fingers, so technically not fried? would have been nasty if in direct line of shot tho!
so how did that happen??? i check for continuity across the poles. 1. nothing! i check voltage on a 12V batt. 0.00
just opened the multimeter and it's toast too, even though it lights, reads 0.00 when on... nice.