Am I getting this?

More spark issues, I previously had the ballast resistor wired all kinds of wrong, with power going into both ends of the ballast (don't ask, I don't know lol), wired it up correctly this time, except that the coils power supply is resisted during cranking and running (keyed hot is manually switched and doesn't lose power when key turns to crank... regardless, back when the wiring was all messed up, the coil would spark decent but only once per second, and the plug wires barely sparked at all, now on new setup the coil doesn't spark at all. Just want to make sure that I understand how the electronic system works: box gets full 12v, box gives pickup coil power, pickup coil tells coil when to fire, coil tells plugs wires when to fire, plugs fire in given sequence/timing, correct? Trying to troubleshoot but don't know where to start and really need to learn this system instead of posting threads on here every other day, big TIA