Wireless MPG XHC-HB04 prob when going from 2.7 to 2.8

I'm building a new box with LinuxCNC 2.8.2 now. 

It's working, except the XHC-HB04 will not work prior to homing the machine.  No response.  This may be intentional, but undesirable.  We often use it to set up the machine prior to homing.  You can use the keyboard, sure.

This is a makerspace with a broad user base and we don't communicate changes easily to the whole community.  While this limitation would probably not bother me alone, I can foresee questions from users lingering for months on minor things like this.

Why does it not work now prior to homing, and can it be reenabled?

Also I do have a "RESET DRIVES" button on the screen to pull the hardware reset pin which briefly depowers the motors that also unhomes the axes in software, since they were depowered and the position is not certain.  It now gives an error that it can't dehome and something about "joint mode", and won't dehome.   What's this about and can I make it work?
 

You need to connect the jog-counts and jog-enable to _both_ the axis and the joint jog pins.

The conversion script is meant to do that for you. I am disappointed if it didn't.

Hmm, here's my xhc hal file, any advice?

It looks like you caught most of it already, but missed:

should be