yes ECU is the ignition box (not HEI, but similar)
when you direct wired it to drive it home- how did you do this? Wire from battery to ballast?
Possibly your dual ballast is in backwards...it can work that way, but makes for hard starting- a car i bought recently had the ballast upside down for lack of a better way to say it. There's a U -shape notch in one side to determine how it goes. 67Dart273's test above will sort that out for you....
