ECU driving me to drink

Im almost at the point where I give all this a miss , fit a dual plane inlet , a 500 holley , an MSD hemi6 ignition controller and a powertrain trans controller.
Adds up to a touch over $3000 , but at least I can tune a carb , the ignition is pre set with a tune for a 5.7 and I'm still waiting for an answer on the trans controller.
Or buy another new loom and ecu from hotwire or similar and possibly be stuck with the same issues $2000
I don't want to have to tune anything with a laptop and spend coin on dyno time .
At least if I do the first option , I have several systems to work with rather than one that runs or in my case doesn't run anything........