Mark, If you actually manage to create this backup basic interface... well... you become my hero!

I'm going to say this again...

Kernel support from Mark is not necessary to write a backup utility. There is enough information in the Emptool source code for someone to write a completely standalone backup utility that requires nothing but the consumer software to be installed on the player. This has already been demonstrated with a command-line utility (posted on this BBS) that can retrieve a file from the player via ethernet.