great news :] i wired the motors the correct way round (still did not work)
i added enable- wires to the BoB and set pins 1,16, and 17 as the enable- (still did not work)
then i turned on step low active and it worked :) it looks and sounds good to me :)
the only problem i have is that when i tested all 3 motors at once one started to lag, as though there is not enough power for all 3 to be on full motion at the same time, does this sound familiar or maybe something needs tweaking ?