n the config.ini I have car_rate=9600 set, I set hijack to give the player control of the serial. This is in car thru the sled, no mode forced hijack. I have my laptop connected and hyper terminal set to 9600 baud. I press q and exits the player as expected. Hijack says it removed some menu entries and then i get a bunch of gibberish and it no longer accepts keyboard input. This gibberish is probably the empeg switching to 115200 baud, because if I reconnect at 115200 baud I am in the shell. Is this the expected behavior?

No that it not the expected behaviour, in fact it seems to be behaving as if it is in AC mode. How does it behave when you force the player to DC mode with hijack?