Programmer came in and I spent all afternoon with it. Turned out the data lines from the damn mini usb port were not soldered down... after I fixed that I flashed the recovery firmware and I was good to go. I am not going to be the test subject again but it would be good to know if that...
I was trying to update the firmware from 4.3 to the most recent and I hadn't done it in a while. I didn't notice the note about the GDemu until after. The firmware never downloaded past 9% and I never tried to install it but I did try and change the firmware flavour from standard to relaxed...