Does that seg fault specifically say I'm running out of memory?

No. But the Linux 2.2 kernel can get very crashy if memory is very tight and lots of pages are being dirtied. Asking you to try it after a clean install was just a way of eliminating memory issues from our enquiries.

If you don't want to apply a whole upgrade, just revert init and the kernel to the stock Empeg versions (so nothing but the player is running) and then try it.

Peter