Volvo: 83 DL Stereo Replacement, wire colors, pep boys

Question
Wow, thanks so much for answering all of these questions.  I have an '83 DL wagon.  It used to have a factory AM/FM with cassette.  I bought a $100 stereo at Pep Boys and went to install it.

I hooked red to red, yellow (from deck) to blue (in car).  Yellow was supposed to go back to fuse box, and the blue one seemed to, and it had an in line fuse as well.  And then tried the front speakers "out" from the new stereo to the front (and only) speaker wires for the vehicle.  (Oh yeah, hooked up ground and antenna too.)

First, I got power.  It would suck in CD's and spit them out.  But the digitial read out wouldn't do anything.  I tried the reset button several times, still nothing.

I returned it for the exact same model.  The exact same thing . . . except now I have no power.  The in line fuse on the blue wire is good.  All of the fuses in the fuse box are good.  It has a removal face plate and I kept trying to lock and unlock that as well, but I don't get a thing.  Dead as a door nail.

I pulled that under dash "carpet" like think down and everything seemed hooked up.  The ignition had been replaced before I bought it due to an attempted break in, so it's a bit of a mess.

I have some parts, along with a Bentley manual coming in the mail, so I'll look in there.  I just thought I'd ask.  Ugh, what a pain!

Nick

Answer
As a basic rule, you acutally need two 12V lines to the stereo.  One is always on, even when the key is out.  This ejects the CD and keeps the clock time saved.  The other 12V only comes on when the key is in, and supplies the radio with the rest of power for the display and speakers.  It sounds like you only had one of those plugged in.  

Another tip of advice, forget the wire colors and use a voltmeter and phyiscal wire tracing to figure out which wire is which.  I found that when I put in my stereo, the colors were different that what the radio said, and also different then what my Hayne's manual said.  I had to go through manually to be sure I was hooking up the right wires.  It takes some time but doing it by hand it the best way not to fowel things up.  Good luck!