Help! It's dead!

[dadsgreentruck]

Well, my alternator bearings went out the other day ('96 S-10 4x4), so I took it up to the local auto-electric shop to get it repaired. I re-installed it last night and cleaned up the battery terminals. The positive side-post connector was totally blue-green with corrosion, and the battery terminal had yellow powder in the screw socket (guess that explains my weak sounding starter...).

Anyway, I hooked everything back up, went to start up. No dome light, no radio, no beep when I insert the key. Totally dead. In fact, now that I think about it, there was no "click" and spark when I connected the battery.

I measure 12.6v at the battery terminals, the post on the back of the alternator, and on the little connector that goes in to the wiring harness on the passenger side. It was too dark to try to test at the starter. If the main lead to the starter was bad, would that cause the entire system, lights and all to go down?