I played around with turning over the engine with the electric starter motor while there was no spark plug, exhaust, or intake installed so I could get the maximum speed the engine could turn over. The ECU needs to know when the engine is cranking vs running, so I can set the max cranking RPM a bit above the actual engine cranking speed. Above that RPM, the ECU will assume the engine is running, stop giving the engine extra "startup" fuel, and begin after-start enrichment and warmup enrichment if needed.
I had the intake manifold and TB just hanging from some string on the bike's frame. I needed the injector and the MAP/IAT/TPS to be connected, otherwise the ECU displays a code on its equivalent of a check engine light. I connect everything up along with a 1990-ish vintage inductive timing light I bought some time back. Turn the bike on, wait for the ECU to do its priming pulse and fuel pump prime, and hit the starter button. No tach signal. Doh! I had the kill switch on. Turn the kill switch OFF, and try again. WOO HOO! It was quite nice to see that RPM gauge on my laptop move for the first time.
First thing I noticed was that the decompression valve on this engine lets the starter turn quite fast, albeit with no restriction. Second thing was sparks! The only good kind of sparks in a vehicle; from the spark plug. Big, bright, blue sparks. It appears that the ECU is "talking" to the CDI, the CDI is firing the coil, and the coil is making a spark occur at the spark plug tip, at least in open, atmospheric pressure air. Third noticed thing was my old timing light wasn't working; no flashy-flashy. I forgot to try turning around the clip-on lead, so I'm not sure if it is broken or not but no matter, I have another timing light that connects directly to the ignition coil. Fourth thing I noticed was that the tuning software recorded an ECU reset right after I let go of the starter button, not good.
A reset, in this instance, is the ECU not having enough either voltage delivered to it, or not enough current available to it, resulting in a voltage drop. I looked online and it seems like a starter solenoid isn't an uncommon thing to cause reverse voltage spikes or just bad electromagnetic interference (EMI). I can test this theory by not using the solenoid, but just bridging the two starter contacts, completing the starter motor circuit, but not energizing/de-energizing the solenoid's coil. I can also add a diode across the solenoid's coil to limit the inductive kick-back like I did with the relays. I'll test that in the coming days.
I managed to snag a datalog of the test start. The tuning software saves datalogs in a excel-style spreadsheet. You can view them in any software that can open .xls files. Viewing the files this way is quite... raw and dry. An alternative is to use the software that mega/microsquirt users use to view logs;
MegaLogViewer MS. The "MS" version is the free version, that's the one I used to view the logs. It can graph any of the variables the ECU logged, and compare them in the same graph to any other variable. If you buy, I think it is the HD version of the software, you can import your tuning file from your tuning software and the log viewer will show you where in the VE table, spark table, AFR table, etc. the engine is at any specific point in the logs. I took a screenshot of the few seconds I logged while the engine was turning over.