Thanks, Jezuz! I checked and all the grounding was good....I had the transistors on a mini-breadboard with a Boarduino....nice ground bus and Vcc bus for the motors and diodes to protect the microcontroller from back voltage...the Arduino clone was powered via USB.
Surfing some other sites it does look like it probably was current or power....everyone says those little motors are power hungry! KaBoom! Nothing like the smell of burning electronics, heh....
Annie 