Hi Tony...

I actually did get the smiley face after the kernal upload. I was quite pleased (if only for a VERY short period of time) with myself.

I just used firefox to download the file and have not yet encountered a bad download. I would have performed a CRC check but didn't have any information about the correct checksum. I also did perform the RAM test by pressing CTRL-T during power-up and didn't get any errors during the check.

This happened quite suddenly. The player worked in my car this morning, I brought it in the house to upload some additional songs and the empeg wouldn't boot up when I plugged in the adapter. I didn't drop it.

I also couldn't find any information about the (data abort vector) message instead of telling me that the kernel was loading into memory.

Is there something in particular I could check or is there a way to force the bootup into a more extreme diagnostic mode?

Thanks again!