Well we can finally put this one to bed, I went and borrowed a friends solus and did it in about 3 minutes. buzz test failed cylinder 8 and failed a contribution test on the same cylinder.
Now for the interesting part OBDLink sent me this when I contacted them, "
Hi James. Unfortunately, I believe the 1997 Ford F250 is not considered to be an OBD-II compliant vehicle. This vehicle is classified as a medium duty vehicle, and was not required to be OBD-II compliant until 2004-2005. Please accept our apologies that we advised you that it would work with your truck. Someone from customer service will contact you shortly and we will be happy to refund your purchase. Best regards, Shubert."