Congrats on this! I damaged my trackpad cable in replacing my keyboard. and there is function to the keyboard (not much) only how you described with a bit of key function only when typing in my wifi password (not in OS X) but this gives me hope! my trackpad cable arrives today. Ill keep you informed.
Would the track pad ribbon cable cause this? And I am sure as I can be... I don think so since it is exactly the same with both keyboards. it works when go into reboot 0 option - I can type my wifi password in. and move the choices (which disk) with the arrow keys it recognizes the pram reset... the back light is on ... its only when you go into the OS X whether setup or full OS X I did clean the cable with ISO and there is no change.
Dan, I have a couple of questions; When I start noticing problems w my logic board before I would have to re "bake it" .. I was thinking the thing for me to do to help prevent taking it all apart again is the blanket trick.. how can I have it run hot in the blanket? I tried once and it ran cool. Also You mentioned to delete the AMD GPU drivers. How do you do that? I have an early MBP 2011. 17" Thank you again! Julie
answer: it was not a logic board failure - it was a GPU failure that is very common in 2011's. I did the logic board bake and it its working perfectly! thank you all for your help!