Quoted from hool10:So I fired it up with fire extinguisher in-hand and the GI lights up for a split second, fuse blows, and that is that.
I think your problem may be elsewhere if you are blowing a fuse. From experience, I know that if you plug in the ribbon cable one row up on the fliptronix board, flashers will be nice and bright for a second and then blow out the secondary solenoid fuse.
So check over everything that you had unplugged to be sure everything is plugged up correctly.
Damage to the board at the RAM location should only keep your game from booting up, not blowing fuses.