it was a good suggestion about usb 2 vs 3, I tried plugging my dead radio panel into a usb 2, and it worked, woohoo, but guess what my multi panel then stopped functioning again. it seems adamant to not let me have all workign at the same time.
My years of pc experience tell me this must be a conflicting usb resource, but I keep coming back to the fact that if I reinstall spad it works perfectly, and the logitech provided test app works perfectly on all 3 devices even at the same time.