Strange PIO issue (linux/De0-soc-nano)

Everything worked — ONCE —

my design has ~13 PIO’s of various sizes which control & monitor various fpga functions

i have compiled via the EmbeddedLinuxBeginnerSGuide a zillion times … and am familiar with the process … written snippets of testing in C, have ncurses working, etc …etc …

except for ONE brief day nothing has worked …

& under investigation ->
all my pio inputs are functional (switches / button presses)
(set as input only)

but none of my outputs register / save the outputs (set as output only)
even setting ‘reset values’ are not produced …
(I.E. the LEDs don’t light )
(also a altera timer does not reflect any write as well)

I’m sure it is something so obvious that i can’t see it …

any clues would be appreciated …

i’ll reply to my own post
mainly because of lesson learned :

don’t keep old *sof files hanging around & presume they are the latest …
& if you write automation scripts try to remember what they are supposed to point at …

2+ full days wondering why the code wasn't working -- welllll it was the "old code" 

aaagghhh …