Thanks m1ch43lzm for the very detailed analysis... To be honest I'm a noob to electronics and just starting out. I'm going to go to school as a ee major soon but for now I'm limited to using my multimeter and chasing voltage rails. I've chased the 19.5 volt rail (which reads 19.66 on my fluke dmm) starting at the top two pins from dc-in past the first two mosfets and on. They are all 19.5volt and seem normal. However, I'm stuck where I read the 6th pin and it reads 0.283-0.284volts. Obviously something has shorted and the protection mechanism has turned on. But I dont know where to go from here....

I think they made drastic changes to the board at revision F because on the boardview that was posted, the dc-in pin number 6 goes to a resistor then to a diode from which there are like a hundred connections to all kinds of components. On my board, that diode is missing entirely....