The player will be listening to the serial console waiting to be sent serial commands.

It might be worthwhile asking the empeg guys to add a config.ini option to their next release to disable the player listening to the serial port after it starts. Not sure whether they would be forthcoming... the other option is to start the player with the -s- flag (I think that is the correct flag)... but you would have to modify the /sbin/init to do that or make preinit start the player software itself.

Cheers

Kim