Finally had time to track this down. I'm passing this along for anyone who might have this happen down the road.
The contrast POT (VR1) was not the problem. The 100k resistor (R10) which is part of the contrast circuit went bad. I took it out to measure the value and instead of 100k my meter said 1.7meg, so 17 times what the value should have been.. I can only speculate as to why, but since that resistor is right next to the memory backup battery I think that's the key. Long ago this battery leaked before I changed it out. Looking at R17, I could see discoloration on the leads. So one small resistor was all I needed to swap out and this machine is back up and running. Kurt McCullum
