the same entry says that if i have the wires switched, the player will keep playing instead of going to standby

The Neg. spike would sort of kick the empeg into full unconcsioussness(sp?) without letting it go to sleep...

Sounds to me like the fuse on the memory wire is broken, or wire not properly connected; in this case the MkII will be powered through the ignition sense line (obviously only when the key is "on"). This could cause bad things to happen in some fault cases (burnt out tracks on the circuit board etc) so this behaviour was changed on the MkIIa. The MkIIa can not be powered solely through the ignition sense line...

So AFAIK, a cradle with correctly wired ignition sense but somehow broken supply on the memory line wouldn't let a MkIIa operate at all, while a MkII would come on off with the key but not enter stand-by mode.

/Michael