Hi Firth,
I'm the owner of Indigo 1 which is pretty much Virus B with a different case. I have some similar issues with mine and I think I made it worse.
A couple of weeks ago my Indigo after switching on booted up normally, but the backlight of LCD stated blinking. I didn't do much research about this issue - initially, I think I didn't even found this forum, but I think through gearslutz I found some info about failing capacitors. Someone linked to a drawing of capacitors location and polarisation of Virus B, so I bought capacitors on eBay and replaced all. Also - trusting in that drawing I didn't notice that there is a slight difference with locations of capacitors and polarity. I also replaced the 5v 5pin voltage regulator. Btw original on pin 2 was showing 4.95 volts - is it right? Shouldn't be 5V? The new one shows less than 5V as well. So now I have indigo that plays, leds and knobs working, but LCD died. I even managed to break one of the wires to LCD just few moments ago, so without soldering iron I can't fix it now. I'll get one tomorrow. Just a couple of hours ago my cheap 9.99 soldering iron just died on me and I can't do anything.
I'm not sure also If I didn't drop a ball with the wrong temperature settings on soldering iron - I'm sure I set this to higher than 370 degrees, and I'm afraid I actually damaged capacitors when I was soldering new ones to PCB.
Anyway ... since you are based in Manchester and I live in Westhoughton, maybe we could meet up and have look around? I have one 5pin 5V controller left. We can measure voltage on yours - God knows - maybe yours is broken. There is 7805 regulator that should draw 5V, but shows on my voltmeter 4.95V. Maybe there is a chance that we have the same PCB? Mine is Virus MB 3.2 Lage 4 2000. Worst case scenario we can have a few pints
Cheers
Matt.