ok so before I go drilling on this thing I want it to work to begin with.

long story short you can get some games to start up with their company logo but then nothing after.
Mario Kart shows the Nintendo logo in white and stays there
Blazeon has the Atlus logo rotate in one letter at a time and then fade to black with nothing else coming up
Gradius III shows a white grid that doesn't go away.

that's normal for gradius when the game starts normally it flashes a white grid before going to the Konami logo and starting the game.

I'm curious if theres any thing else I should check before diving into caps.

board and connector (both sides) have been cleaned thoroughly.
games mentioned above work fine in another system