I did get the issue with the resetting solved...
It ended up being the 20 ohm resistor for 'brightness'.
I will change all that to an NPN later... for now i removed the PWM wire.
I did add 1k ohm resistors for pulldown... on the buttons... you think these are too small?
Also, i changed the PNP (tip42a) to an NPN (tip41a) and i get the pic to startup with no resets now, but it locks at the first screen. (odd)...
so before i changed anything else i switched it back to a PNP and it works fine again.
This seems odd to me, since it should have been an NPN to start with.
Thanks again. It is now powering very well.
I will post all updates with final pictures and some code after i get this project up and running.