I'll give that a try while I wait... I did try all of the drives individually (and even a 3rd drive I have with player software on it) on each cable position though...

One interesting point - I mentioned that right before the "crash" the player was stumbleing on "corrupt" files. Well, both of those files are playing fine now... so if Smu is right and it is maybe a bad chip on the board this might be a symptom?