No, I plan to unplug and move the outer left & right down to those spots to have a 16x16 display to play with after I get the 8x32 working. Will wire those 2 in parallel.
Figured out last night why my display was off - misread the MAX7219 datasheet and had the MSB wired to the LSB of the displays.
Had figured out previously that the matrices were rotated 90 degrees, a result of not realizing they were 2 color devices and not single color - the datasheet did match the part marking - found another that matched a number in the artwork on the bottom of the board, so I need to unwrap 64 wires, rotate the parts and re-do the wiring.