If you started the player with the -s option and modified your init so that it called the player in the background, you should be able to keep your serial shell through the cable. Then you could sz or simply cat the database file (can you cat a binary file and read it correctly?). I've not tried starting the player in the background yet, would this work?
Just throwing ideas out there...
Jason

_~= Dearing =~_
"WAY too happy about having #99."