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SUCCESS IT RUNS. First a big thank you for all of the input on this problem. Eventually it sank in to my head and I found the problem. I got another ecu on monday and plugged it in. Same issue as before: good fuel pressure. Spark to the cylinders, but no indication on the Noid light plugged into the wiring harness at cylinder #6. So.... back to the beginning. because what are the chances that all 3 of the ecu's that I had tried were bad.....Pretty slim . So first to check the timing, I pulled the rocker arm cover and found the timing was off by 60 degrees (every plug wire was one position off. Now, I had checked this before and was sure that I had the timing relatively close to where it should be, but then again, when I make a mistake, I generally make a big one. And there it was. Problem solved. I still don't understand why the noid light didn't flash when plugged into the wiring harness. it tested ok when connected directly to 12v. but it runs so that is all that is important.
I still have to connect the tach to see if it shorts out the pulse from the coil, and will post the results of that tomorrow.
In retrospect, here is what was found during this endless headache of trying to get this to run. I found the ground strap inside the distributor was broken. that was probably the reason it wouldn't start in the first place. But the time that I found that, I had done so many other things to the car that it was all messed up. Now most of that is fixed.
ONE MORE THING OF IMPORTANCE. While going through this endeavor, i found the fuel hoses to the injectors were just about to fall apart. I was able to cut off the factory clips on the top end of the injectors and replace the hoses without replacing the injectors which all seemed to be working fine. it just took a small grinder to cut the metal fastener, some new hose and some hose clamps.
thanks again for all of the help

That's great! glad to hear .. so while correcting the timing you found a broken ground at distributor?

no I found the broken distributor wire quite a while ago. It was probably the original reason of the car not running, but rather than being the methodical reasoning person which I sometimes can be, I jumped in and started with other things that had given me problems in the past. ]
It was after I had fixed the distributor, cleaned out the injectors, replaces the injector hoses. replaces the starter (than's another good story), checked all of the wiring, verified spark to the plugs, verified the fuel pump was providing adequate pressure, but not finding any pulse to the injectors.
after trying 3 of the same ecu's and still getting no injector pulse, that I started over, and rechecked the timing. with a few adjustments it started right up
i'm still not sure why the noid lights dkdn't work in the injector harness plugs, and i do need to apologize to the gent who sold me the 2nd ecu (because I returned it as defective when it probably was as good as my original and the other one that I bough
t). but it runs and that's what matters.

now to get the idle smoother and back on the road

Process of elimination, always check the basics and never overlook anything. Glad you found it. How does it run?

At least 60 degrees off is something that could give you a backfire I'm not sure if this ground wire was preventing a trigger signal. I trashed all my 530i parts when I upgraded to a 3.5.

Mercedes has all those little macaroni shaped hoses for the injectors. Same for the 914