i used the tartool from rioboot.zip to untar the rioplay arf.

Sounds like this rioboot package somehow isn't handling the /dev entries correctly. I don't have a Windows box here so I can't really try this out, but I downloaded the RIoBoot file and took a look at it. I see there's a dev.tar file in there that has all the /dev entries in it. Anyone know what it's for?