I tried changing the fuse bits to be sure. I followed the setting on your FAQ page regarding a new chip: avrdude -c usbtiny -p m328p -B 250 -F -U lfuse:w:0xe2:m -U hfuse:w:0xd1:m -U efuse:w:0x06:m
With the short across R4 (I still maintain bad ENET or wrong ENET jack), I was reading 0.1A using a 12V bench power supply. That just puts it over 1.2W which was quite high I thought. When I take out the enet jack and power the entire board now, I get 0.06A x 12V = 0.72W. Still, no MSG on LCD screen.
I’m sending back the completed board tomorrow. Enet jack is de-soldered.