Thanks kidturbo. I really appreciate the help. I may end up sending a PM but I'll post the questions here just in case any information given may help someone else in the future. These forums are invaluable for that reason. Much information has already been shared and PMs are not visible to everyone.

I never bothered looking at the bench harness tutorial until you pointed it out. I think that I already have the harness set up for the ECM and TCM. I will double check to be sure I have power on those pins and report back.

So just to be sure I don't forget to ask, since I am not using a BCM and the PCM is not receiving a signal from it to start the engine am I relying on the crank and cam sensors seeing the engine turning over? It works this way on a LS1B ecu just fine. I did a LS swap into a Jeep and it would start just fine when I cranked the engine over from the Jeep ignition switch which was separate from the GM PCM.