I have a multimeter arriving soon, is my initial wiring diagram mostly correct ?
its possible, I have nothing wired into the 5v jumper but I am getting 5v out
You dont wire anything to the +5V output. I'm asking if the jumper in the yellow box is in place. I'm sure it is but just checking.
Yeah its there
You can do one of two things, wait for your DMM so you can check the 3.3V or buy a different motor driver.
What are the motors you are trying to control?
they are small 6v DC motors, also do I need ENA and ENB even if I am just testing and not trying to control the speed?
Not sure if this makes a difference but i am cutting the ends of my jumpers to fix them into screw terminal adapters, I also have ordered better jumper wires. FWIW this is my first microcontroller project
Connecting devices that use different I/O voltages like the 3.3V Nano 33 and 5V L298 can be a problem when designing electronic circuits. Sometimes voltage level shifters are required, sometimes not. The L298 is one of the cases where shifters should not be needed. As I said many other people have used the L298 with 3.3V processors like the ESP32 and the ESP8266.
If you are using a solderless breadboard to make all the connections, that could be part of the problem. With some of the cheap ones the connections can be intermittent.
Can you show a nice clear picture(s) of your set-up, maybe someone will spot a problem.
Hi, @tfapps
Welcome to the forum.
Can you post some images of your project?
So we can see your component layout.
Tom.... 
The “male” tips of the enables are soldered wire but should be making enough connection. New jumper wires are enroute
I think you are mis-understanding about the Enable A, B jumpers, see post #29.
These little black things are also called jumpers:
They short the two pins together.
When you have the L298 connected to the Nano, the ENA and ENB "jumpers" must be removed or you may damage the Nano.
that’s a huge help, I thought the enable were different inputs but now I see the two pins. here is my set up now
with that set up its still refusing my input, the code is running but no motor activity. I can measure 10V going into L298 from battery pack, the Nano itself is getting laptop power
So you now have a DMM?
Measure the voltage from the Nano 3.3V power output pin
I am only reading 0.1 to 0.2 V between 3.3 and gnd
Something wrong somewhere!
The Nano would not not even work if the 3.3V was that low. Do you have the meter set to DC volts and on a scale that's maybe 10V or 20V?