Thanks for the feedback. I was hoping something along the same lines too.
It has been a while since I’ve had to mess around with this, but if I recall correctly, the Gen1 was supposed to be able to power up even when the front plate was taken off the back plate (the power supply plugs into the front and all the zone wires are on the back plate). If that is the case, I would have expected the thing to power up with none of the zone/sensor wires hooked up at all.