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My guess is that it is unable to bootstrap from the harddisk in the player (the original 40GB one).


Could be. Have you tried putting another disk in it and booting from the CD?

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on the board stays cool, which suprizes me because of the massive cooling body applied.


It's massively over-specified. I wouldn't worry about it. At least until you've ruled out hard disk problems.

If you feel up to it, you can build a level converter and connect to the serial header on the motherboard. I think (but I'm not sure) that it's the same as the one used in the Rio Receiver -- see this page (under "Console") for more details.
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-- roger