SWTPC 6800

Thought I would post this here in case it reaches eyes my forum posts don't. So I finally got my hands on a SWTPC 6800! This machine is chock full of boards.. 4 ram boards, the cpu card (with SWTBUG ROM), MP-S, MP-C serial cards, a floppy controller, some little custom board, a sound card.. etc. This presents some challenges obviously, since the machine has been altered from stock it could be tricky getting it running. Before I had it stripped down, I tried powering up as is (i pulled the older MP-C card and put MP-S in slot 1). This produced little except for a string of random characters that would repeat every time I hit reset, exactly the same number. I tried stripping it down to CPU card, MP-S, and the RAM board designated as '0'.. but all I get at the terminal end is a single random character on power up. I then thought I'd try my luck putting the CPU card in my working MSI system (taking out its card). Nope. Now, because my CPU card has been modified to accomodate SWTBUG and possibly something else, I'm not sure if it'll even work in a stripped down config. Not sure about the interplay between boards. Anyway.. if anyone has any thoughts to point me in the right direction I'd be most appreciative. Ultimately I'd like to get this beast working with my CT1024 terminals. Brad