Hey everyone, sorry I kind of disappeared for a bit. Things have been pretty busy around here...like a few household projects and trying to find a job. (Sadly, no hits yet. haha) So I haven't found much time to work on this... I'll get back to working on it as soon as things calm down a little over here!
@Charlie: Thanks for that trace! That really helps me out! I'll be sure you check it all out in the order you wrote it...and especially C141. I really didn't check any caps or resistors as I wasn't sure if the ones I were going to check were relevant or not to my problem. haha
@Keith Courage: Thats strange. Hmm...well someone else said that the RAM is stored on the IFU so perhaps thats fried... Then when it tries to boot the game and stores the executing code to RAM it becomes corrupted and locks. I'm totally pulling this out of a hat of course, but its possible.
And if Samurai Ghost ends up unable to send me an IFU, then I'd be happy to work something out with you. haha