Cloud car on drugs!

Hello all, I'll get right to it. Me & the Mrs are coming home from I,Robot(Okay flick) and out of nowhere, my fine runnung 96 Cirrus w/87,000 miles dies, thens starts running again, while this going on, the wipers are running, but not switched on, the airbag light is on, and where the digital odometers # are supposed to be, it looks kinda like "nu bu5" but actually the 'n' is like the top half of a 0 the 'u', the 'u' looks like the bottom half of a 0, the 'b' looks like an '8' with the two lines missing, the 'u' , bottom half of a zero, and the 5 looks like a real '5'.
You all know how the square around the PRN321 is around the gear that you are in? At times, ALL of them had the square around them at the same time. To worsen matters, we get stuck by a train for 50 minutes, in one of the worst parts of the city.
When it 1st happened, I immediately turned the lights off, and it came back to life, but runnin mighty ragged. I tried the lights 2-3 more times, and when tried, it was like turning the key off. We just filled the car up w/ gas, and none of the gauges were working, it was like the car was off, but the nu bu5, and milage were taking turns flashing on & off, the ABS, and AIR BAG lights were always on, and the wipers were always running slow, although. swithed off.
When the train FINALLY passed, I got the sputtering, detonating, stinking cloud on the move towards home! I went around the Railroad's Road Blocking Arm and ran some stop signs, after making sure that it was safe to do so (by then, it was 1:15 AM), when I was almost home, i turned the wipers on high, and this seemed to smooth the cars performance a great deal, but I was only 2 blocks from home by then,[nice time 2 discover that hunh?]
Anways, I got my wife & myself home safe. And yes, the car is out there too! I checked some fuses & nine are blown, but there is that line of circuit breakers, could one of these be the culprit? The guy that I bought it from told me that the battery was located under the back seat, yeah right! After searching high & low, I finally found its location, but was so whizzed that I didn't feel like getting to it to disconect it. I heard that if you disconnect the battery, when reconnected, the computer will reset itself.
P am hopind that one of you guys/gals know what is going on here, and, hopefully, give me some good news that is is somethingrelatively minor. Please help me if you can. Sincerely, Ric 1{bummed**badredbird

9 fuses blown? sounds like you have a major electrical problem going on there. What fuses were they? What do they protect? You might have some loose/ frayed wires somewhere. take a look around under the hood and check the wiring all over. Sounds like you had a mass or problems all over.

Sorry about the typo, there are 0-NO blown fuses. Now if there were 9, I'd take it right over the scales, if you know what I mean.

'no bus' is the message you're getting. This means the instrument cluster is unable to to talk to anything. So any warning light on is caused by this 'no bus' message.
Cluster can't talk to the air bag module = air bag light on.
Cluster can't talk to the Transmission module = PRND21 all lit up.
You're wipers on with the switch off. The Body module controls wipers. When you turn on the the wiper switch, you're changing the resistance in a circuit from ground(Bat'-') to the body module.
If the 'Bus' is down the engine should still run fine, and the wipers too. This makes me think bad voltage. Too high or too low.
Check you're generator and battery first. And please let us know what you find.

Good Luck.

Thanks Pex, that's a great place to start, and it seems to make sense. I got some di-electric grease, and I'm gonna remove the cluster and apply a tad bit to the connection, + make sure that it's tight. I tried unhooking the battery to reset the computer, with no improvement.
This really helps me a GREAT DEAL learning what this message means, and gives me a starting point. Thanks a Billion Pex!
By the way, do you (or anyone) know if the 96 Cirrus has a bulkhead connector on the firewall, just ahead of the steering column, like the great classic Mopars do? I don't think a bit of Di/grease would hurt there either.
I will have the alt/batt tested. What does no bus mean? Can't communicate?
Thanks again pex! 1badredbird

Hello 2 all! The Cirrus is awake! It seems just to have had a bad connection at the battery. It did have the red & green corrosion preventers, which I did away with. I cleaned the batt & C/ends, but left the corr. preventers in-BAD MOVE! These cars seem to be very touchy as far as grounding goes, 1 bad ground can, and will, put the car in a coma, make all kinds of crazy things happen. I took my battery back out to get tested, and it didn't pul it down below 11 Volts. So I took it home, sanded the battery & cable ends REALLY good, turned it over, just to show my Mom just how messed up it was, and Bingo! It ran like new, I was off & running within 10 seconds!
Thanks 2 all for their responses! 1 happy 'bird, Cirrus, and Wife!-----Ric