First of all thanks to everyone for helping.
With the diff lock problem turns out that the fork shaft that disengages the diff lock has an adjusting bolt and lock nut on the end of it that the engage/disengage lever rides on outside of the gearbox case . I was able to hook onto the bolt head with a small pry bar, give it a little nudge and disengage the diff lock. I'm still going to flush the gearbox and add new oil to try and make it work right. When I drained the gear oil it was foamy, don't really know what that means but it's probably not good.
With the shifting problem, I pulled the tranny cover that has the gear selector lever in it and found that a bolt had fallen out of the shift guide plate that's bolted to the under side of the trans cover so the shifter was moving all over the place and wasn't always engaging the shift forks. Luckily the bolt had fallen between the fork shafts and gotten hung up there. I was lucky, if the bolt had not gotten hung up there, it and the locking washer would have fallen into the gears of the transmission. Dodged a bullet there.
learned about this problem on the internet so 284 owners beware, if the shifter seems sloppy and the tractor won't go into 3rd, better pull that top cover and check it out.