2.9.4 7i96s - pendant doesn't go active until after a MDI move is made

How to get the AXIS into manual mode at start up?

I have the typical cheap pendant (XYZA select, X1, X10, X100 and 100count MPG) wired into the encoder of a new 7i96s and I've got everything working on the test bench (after some help with an axis scale = 1 issue...)
At first the MPG worked fine until I made any MDI move (home all axis or a G0 x1) and then the MPG would stop responding.
I eventually thought the problem was similiar to one posted here concerning joints vs axis so I went in a swapped a bunch of lines from joint and changed them to be given in axis format and that worked... sort of
The pendant now doesn't respond until I make some form of MDI move (home all or a G0 x1 type thing)
Looking through what I can see, the program is starting in MDI and I really want it to start in Manual
Tried a handful of things relating to force halui.teleop.enabled in the custom.hal and then in the custom_postgui.hal thinking that it was getting overwritten before the program actually got going but with not luck
Tried
setp halui.mode.manual 1
and then
setp halui.mode.teleop 1
in either the custom.hal or post_customgui.hal with no change

I've got forced homing off in the ini and would like to keep it that way
I know the logic behind having the machine not in MPG mode until it's homed but since I can do any MDI command (g0 x1) and it works after than the way is should so it's not a safety thing

As always, any help would be appreciated
M
 

hal & ini files ?

added them to the first post, pretty messy but that's where I'm at so far

you need to be in teleop mode to jog so I think selecting MDI mode disable this. Check sate of halui.mode.is-teleop 
and select teleop mode by setting halui.mode.teleop to true