Sonar x3 and roland pk-5a

I know this is possible because I did it in X1 with success for  a couple of years but I recently had a hard drive crash and figured it was a sign to upgrade to x3.  So after rebuilding my machine and putting x3 on it, I don't remember how I made my Roland PK5 work.  
Here's the question.  I have a Roland pk-5a foot pedal system.  I used to use this live to start/stop/ff/rr sonar x1 when I had the Roland in midi control mode.  I cannot for the life of me get this working in x3.  I'm going nuts.  I've tried adding every type of control surface out there especially working with the Cakewalk generic and trying to get it to recognize the sysex commands coming in but it doesn't work.  I know this works.  I used this live for a couple years.  I can't remember what I did to make it work.  Does X3 not receive sysex messages the same.  I cannot believe that would change.
any help would be appreciated as I'm dead in the water without it.
 
thanks in advance,
 
paul