Tonight I found the elusive string/bridge that was causing my first aether attempt to go bust. I had to desolder pins 1 through 14 of the PIC24 chip... lift up the chip enough to clean under the chip body and then... resolder it (without creating a lake of lead ..... ) 30 minutes later......... done....... and now I have white on command...... red, green and blue at whatever level I desire.... Massive feeling of AWWWWWWWWWWwwwwwwww yeesssSSS! (I missed the existing bridge that tied pins 8 though 12 together through either an unlucky series of missteps or non-steps and then finally found the problem by trying something different . )
Still have to finish assembling the enclosure but the hard part is now over ......
Thanks for the guidance and suggestions RJ, Bill and Rick. Sometimes just a little positive support is enough to go the extra few steps.
Larry