Hi Mark,
I just tried out the upgrader program, and man that's so much more convenient and faster than the serial method.

However, after playing around with the awesome alpha 11 (thanks Peter & Empeg/Rio!) I noticed half my playlists where missing, and a bunch of items were moved into a different root playlist. I ran emplode, and it saw the same structure. So I ran...

rm /drive0/var/database
rm /drive0/var/database3
rm /drive0/var/tags
rm /drive0/var/playlists

and rebooted the player, and everything was back to normal.

I'm not sure if you've tested going from 2.10 to 3.00 a11, but that's what I did.

Anyways, I love the ethernet upgrader so much I can finally unplug this serial cable!