I realize when I get a letter from you Tony, that this is better than getting a random tech at Sonic Blue but I hate to bog you and this forum down in the troubleshooting.

Well, it won't be a random tech at SonicBlue. There's actually only one person handling support for the car player, and that's David Moss ( [email protected] goes straight to him). And I am pretty sure he's grateful for any help this forum can give in reducing his workload.

I don't mind leaving it there except that I suspect it may be responsible for the fact that I can't establish contact with the Rio Car via the upgrade wizard to get the new software into the Rio Car.

Heh, actually, if the upgrade wizard can't talk to the player, it's probably a cable/serial-port issue, unrelated to emplode.

See if you can connect to the player with Hyperterminal (instructions here), and if that doesn't work, then that's also the reason you can't run the upgrade wizard. Let us know how that goes first.