Marking this one solved.  It was a case of ATD (attention to detail) and preventable mistake.  I pulled the GPU once again and plugged HDMI into the on-board graphic.  No signal.  Checked the HMDI connection at monitor and it wasn't seated all the way.  Had to no reason to suspect it because it worked fine when connect to the discreet GPU.  Anyway, low and behold, a video feed off the on-board graphic.  Successfully updated to 2.3.0 BIOS (pretty big update).  Reinstalled the GPU, re-plugged HDMI to it, rebooted, splash screen appears, I can tap F2 and F12 and see the screen menus!  Functionality is nominal.
Cannot update BIOS to 2.3.0 on a XPS 8940 for some reason.  Also there is no splash screen at boot up, the Dell logo, cannot even access BIOS setup after tapping F2 or cannot see it.  I think I'm in it, but the monitor screen is blacked out.  After several minutes of blackness, I can hit enter and it boots up into Windows. I've read through several posts here about same issue and have tried all the recommendations with no success.  I can't even do BIOS recovery because I can't see the recovery menu when pressing ctrl + esc, just a black screen. When I connect the HDMI to the on-board GPU the monitor just says no signal and goes to standby.    Even pulling the discreet GPU did not force the on-board GPU to start.  I assume there is some setting in the BIOS that has been disabled or something else, but if I can't see the settings, I can't change it.  In the Device Manager for the video adaptors, the on-board GPU say's it is not started. Is there a fix for these issues?
XPS 8940, cannot update BIOS, access BIOS UEFI