The latest hangup has been getting a timing signal from the motor to the Megasquirt - my 3RZ doesn't have a cam position sensor, and the reluctor in the distributor only has one tooth. That seemed strange to me, but Toyota made it work. The Megasquirt doesn't like it though. The Megamanual refers frequently to using a Hall sensor and trigger wheel bolted on the crank pulley to provide timing on older motors, so I found a company called DIYAUTOTUNE that sells exactly such a setup, and emailed their tech support looking for help in figuring out the particulars. The fellow I worked with found me an easier solution that cost less than the stuff I was asking about buying, and when I pulled the trigger on the order I had an email with a Priority Mail tracking number three hours after I hit submit. Dudes are fast.
Here's what they sent me - they call it the Zeal daughterboard, and it does a lot of things I don't care about, and one thing that I DO care about, and that's modulating the signal from the VR pickup in the dizzy into something the Megasquirt can wrap it's brain around. The board itself comes unassembled, which is intimidating until you realize that in addition to the instructions posted on line, the board has the location for each component printed directly on it, and each component comes individually wrapped with it's part number and it's location on the board printed on a sticker. They've done their best to turn this into a Lego set, and it's great. I have to plug DIYAUTOTUNE, they've done their best to make this easy, short of assembling the board for me which likely would have doubled the price.
You don't have to solder Legos, though.
I just watched, like, three Youtube videos on assembling a PCB board, so now I'm almost an expert. I'm gonna botch this up anyway though.