No, it's a part of the player bootloader/diagnostic.

As soon as your player hangs, take it out of the sled and get it to a serial connection. Re-boot it on AC. As soon as you stick the plug in, hit Ctl-T as the boot loader starts up. You may need to do this a lot to get it. There's a section in the FAQ about how to do this. This will run through a hardware diagnostic and do a looping memory test. Make sure you have the correct connection settings (115k 8N1 No Handshaking).

The more I think about this, and having just re-read your initial post, it seems to me you have either got a duff drive cable or the IDE soldering issue. It would be worth taking the lid off and the drives to have a look at the board with a magnifying glass to see if you have the problem.