OK!
I know it's Friday night, but what the heck- seems like a good time to fiddle with my 2x60GB empeg.
The goal: install maxfid and fidsift.
The setup:
WinME - emplode - player version 2.0 (developer?) + Hijack v464
Current player load: 20,500+ mp3 files, est. free space 36.2/111GB.
The drives were installed and configured by Stu at Eutronix. I can't tell whether the developer version of the player software is loaded.
Is there a quick check somewhere? I'll check the FAQ.

It seems the way to proceed is to first load the MaxFID patch, then follow it up with tanstaafl's .bat file for Mark's FIDsift.

Ah- but maybe first I'll throw over an album and see how long that takes, just to benchmark things a little. I'll do that and scour the FAQ for developer-player answers. I think there should be some mention of it in the boot log...
edit: yes- it is the developer version. Funny thing- I tried capturing the boot log in Hyperterminal with the 'capture text' feature, but the resulting file is not a nice looking document.

Can I assume that the .bat file may be run concurrently with emplode? I'll also assume that the safe bet is to run it with emplode not connected.

It took about 12 and a half minutes to sync a 35.4MB album with the majority of the time spent rebuilding the database.

update: When I tried to set the drives read-write for the maxfid prep, I got the message:
EXT2-fs warning: checktime reached, running e2fsck is recommended
So- I've started down that road... just so all the t's are dotted and so forth. It's been at it on the first drive for almost half an hour, but I am full of patience.
update2:
It took about a half hour per drive to do the check, then another few minutes to transfer and run the maxfid patch- many thanks to pgrzelak for the steps in this thread.
Next step is the fidsift...
...hmm. I followed the instructions in the post above- created the fidsift directory on C:, changed the text file to my IP (192.168.1.4), and double clicked on the .bat file.
This resulted in a Windows error:
"Error Starting Program
The FTP.EXE file is
linked to missing export WS2_32.DLL:getnameinfo."