yep that's exactly what happened. It wouldn't boot from any
other PCs either so I reinstalled it on the HDD from the USB
stick and it works fine now. I'm up and running but it's still a
little buggy, I suspect because I don't have any way to kill the
power except flipping off the power supply. It's not getting the
startup signal to tell it to turn on and off so the POST and
BIOS are a little wacky.  Anyway, tomorrow I am going to try to
get the dc-dc psu up and running and go from there.  Anyway,
once it's starting up / stopping reliably...then what? Just
stick it in my car and go to town? It took like 5 min to install
Fedora lol  Or perhaps there are some things I should download
first...what would you all say is the next step?