I have both 4 spd and dogleg 5 spd (overdrive)
can anyone tell me if the front half of these two boxes are the same as each other?

How do you know it is an overdrive box?

To the best of my knowledge, the overdrive box had 5th in the "right & foward" position, while the dogleg was "left & back" for first, & these are supposed to be direct in fifth. Mine is.

it's been on my bench for about 6 years needing a set of bearings before that it was in my 1200 ute and i vaguely remember marking the input and output shafts with texter and doing the 1 rev test and i dont think it was 1:1
is yours a smooth case ?

No, I don't think mine's a smooth case. Mine is the 56 series trans.

If you are going to do the "mark it with a texta" test, turn the input shaft about 4 or 5 rotations to get a more positive result, particularly if the overdrive ratio is something like .9, or .95 to 1. You are just testing to see if it is overdrive, so the actual ratio is not important.

Sunny, there was a big discussion about similar topic -- whether the L-series 5-speed will fit a A-series front-case: 5 speed hybrid??

Also note that there is a 60a and 60L transmission.