At the hose location what colors and how many hoses are they.
The book shows the hoses coming out of the vacuum solenoid programmer itself just behind the glove box, those hoses run to a two part mating connector which is most likely what you are describing as the octopus connector.
Should be 6 connections there, violet which is the vacuum source hose, then the blue, yellow, black hose which changes to red hose, white which changes to gray hose, and orange.
In normal A/C operation there should be vacuum on the blue and yellow hose and none on the black/red hose.
The output of the controller that should have the vacuum source out of the controller, would be the connector that has these six colors, purple, blue, yellow, black, white and orange. That is the source group of hoses, see if it matches the colors on your car and if you separate those hoses for testing use them to check for vacuum.
The destination hoses you could follow down to the vacuum motors would be the connector with the following hose colors, purple, blue, yellow, red, gray and orange.
Colors we are looking for to go to vacuum motors are blue to one motor, and the red and yellow hoses to the other one.
You want to see vacuum on the blue and yellow hoses for sure with A/C operation and NONE on the black hose that mates with the red one at that connector.