Is there something I missed when putting the player back together?


Yes.

It is highly likely that when you plugged the cable into the disk drive you were off by one pin.

This is amazingly easy to do, because (at least with the IBM drives) when the cable is mis-aligned it actually looks "better" than when it is on correctly.

You are certainly not the only one to have done this (if indeed this is the problem) and the good news is that this will not harm the disk drive nor the electronics in the player.

tanstaafl.