Awesome stuff Steve, glad you nailed it.

By your explanation it was past my skill level to get going.

Does this mean that as the cap was stuffed, there was no residual charge, and it needed to 'charge up' by being on for a while?  (My electronics knowledge is not fantastic, so i try and take a logical approach to it...)

Thanks Rob.

I was thinking capacitor right near the start due to the "warm up" factor, but thought it would be a big cap, maybe on the power supply.
Never dreamed it would be such a small one on the CPU board. (To be honest, I didn't even know these small components were capacitors to begin with)

The transistor did actually test bad and probably also ruined the cap which was pulling the voltage down.