another update:
upon uploading some mods, i renamed the a couple of them since they had extra periods, etc...and didn't re-try them...but when i tried to take the silt strider to gnisis and ended up on an ord island (one of the mods that worked) i found that everyone there thought i should be in the fishing academy (mod i wanted, but didn't work). now that mod is working. so it seems the the morrowind engine is picky on filenames, even on some that work on pc, and are fatx compatible...so y'all know!