I have the same problem. I use a small executable called player to launch the real player with the -s- option. I could see what was happening and decided that was a bad idea :-(

Modifying the init binary is a great idea, though codewrite is my tool of choice there. After 20 years of wordstar then cua keys, vi is just too much...

However, a modified init would be tricky to have others generate and obviously not redistributable. I could distribute a program that makes the modification but that doesn't sound too friendly either. My plan it to hack kernel to stop the player from messing with the serial port. Probably creating a virtual serial port as messing with major and minor numbers of the devices didn't please the player.

This likely won't happen until summer is over though.

Cheers,

Rex.