Yes, I have a 12mb unit, and damn if I want another as a backup/second unit for mixing. And afaik returning the partitions to ro makes things happier, I will not pretend to know why, but that seems to be the way the player software likes things. *shrug*
I too did get a bunch of stuff streaming off the serial line when I run across long playlists, but I am thinking that putting ds in the startup seems to keep it running/persistent even when it dies (I am likely very, very wrong on this, but *shrug*).
I dont know why, but ds seemed to puke on me only when A) 4+ people where browsing the playlists B) 4+ poeple were listening/browsing and I was doing stuff like quickly skipping songs. So ds was/is fairly stable for my use.

But I do agree with presenting this stuff to Frank, whenever he returns.