Make sure you've got the flow control stuff set in Hyperterminal as specfied (in the FAQ). This is very important.

Once you can get to a shell prompt (for which you'll need the developer version of the player software), try running ``player -i''. That will keep it from trying to play whatever it's playing now. You might then want to try to play that again to see if it'll break again. If so, I'm sure someone at empeg would like to see that MP3. Also verify that the image you put on the empeg was downloaded correctly. I can't imagine that it would work as well as it did if it weren't, but it's worth checking.

``old system call'' is pretty weird, IMO.