I'll attempt to make this quick... I had a bad file which caused my empeg to repeat during boot up. I connected to the player with hyperterminal, emptied the playlist, rebooted, everthing was wonderful. After a day or so, I upgraded to beta 13. The player locked at the boot screen (an atari logo, my personal favorite). I reinstalled beta 11. Now my player hangs up during or bit after loading the visuals. Attempting to control the player with hyperterminal doesn't work. By that I mean hitting control c doesnt give me a command prompt. Hyperterminal looks like this
Starting player
player.cpp : 385:empeg-car 2.00-beta11 2002/02/08.
[6516] player: old system call.

Function entered at [<e5dabff4>] from [<e58bc018>]

Function entered at [<2a00ff24>] from [<2a007f30>]

Unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address 2a00ff28

memmap = C0F74000, pgd = c0f74000

*pgd = 00000000, *pmd = 00000000

Internal error: Oops: 2

CPU: 0

pc : [<c00dfbc8>] lr : [<c0019670>]

sp : c0989f88 ip : c0989f44 fp : c0989fb0

r10: 00000338 r9 : 0000001d r8 : 0000000c

r7 : 00000000 r6 : 2a00ff24 r5 : 2a003f30 r4 : ea000078

r3 : 60000013 r2 : c00fe1e4 r1 : 00000001 r0 : ea000068

Flags: nZCv IRQs on FIQs on Mode SVC_32 Segment user

Control: C0F7517D Table: C0F7517D DAC: 00000015

Process player (pid: 6516, stackpage=c0989000)

Stack:

c0989f60: c0019670 c00dfbc8

c0989f80: 60000013 ffffffff c0989fb8 00000000 006ee1a0 40000013 c0989ff4 c0010794

c0989fa0: 02235770 00000000 c0989fb4 c000a004 c0010714 02235770 4086d764 00000026

c0989fc0: 00000044 00000000 02235770 00000000 00000000 02146ce8 0214aa70 0000001d

c0989fe0: 00000338 00000027 00000044 bdfff9f8 00002000 40888f50 00000010 4086d764

Backtrace:

Function entered at [<c0010708>] from [<c000a004>]

r4 = 02235770

Code: ebfce625 e2440010 (e5961004) e1a035a1 e59f20cc

Restored terminal settings
Remounting first music partition read-only
Remounting second music partition read-only
No secondary hard disk
Abnormal player termination
Player received signal 11
Starting player
player.cpp : 385:empeg-car 2.00-beta11 2002/02/08.
[6531] player: old system call.

Function entered at [<e5dabff4>] from [<e58bc018>]

Function entered at [<2a00ff24>] from [<2a007f30>]

Unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address 2a00ff28

memmap = C0F74000, pgd = c0f74000

*pgd = 00000000, *pmd = 00000000

Internal error: Oops: 2

CPU: 0

pc : [<c00dfbc8>] lr : [<c0019670>]

sp : c0ae9f88 ip : c0ae9f44 fp : c0ae9fb0

r10: 00000338 r9 : 0000001d r8 : 0000000c

r7 : 00000000 r6 : 2a00ff24 r5 : 2a003f30 r4 : ea000078

r3 : 60000013 r2 : c00fe1e4 r1 : 00000001 r0 : ea000068

Flags: nZCv IRQs on FIQs on Mode SVC_32 Segment user

Control: C0F7517D Table: C0F7517D DAC: 00000015

Process player (pid: 6531, stackpage=c0ae9000)

Stack:

c0ae9f60: c0019670 c00dfbc8

c0ae9f80: 60000013 ffffffff c0ae9fb8 00000000 006ee1a0 40000013 c0ae9ff4 c0010794

c0ae9fa0: 02235770 00000000 c0ae9fb4 c000a004 c0010714 02235770 4086d764 00000026

c0ae9fc0: 00000044 00000000 02235770 00000000 00000000 02146ce8 0214aa70 0000001d

c0ae9fe0: 00000338 00000027 00000044 bdfff9f8 00002000 40888f50 00000010 4086d764

Backtrace:

Function entered at [<c0010708>] from [<c000a004>]

r4 = 02235770

Code: ebfce625 e2440010 (e5961004) e1a035a1 e59f20cc

Restored terminal settings
Remounting first music partition read-only
Remounting second music partition read-only
No secondary hard disk
Abnormal player termination
Player received signal 11
Starting player

Make sure you've got the flow control stuff set in Hyperterminal as specfied (in the FAQ). This is very important.

Once you can get to a shell prompt (for which you'll need the developer version of the player software), try running ``player -i''. That will keep it from trying to play whatever it's playing now. You might then want to try to play that again to see if it'll break again. If so, I'm sure someone at empeg would like to see that MP3. Also verify that the image you put on the empeg was downloaded correctly. I can't imagine that it would work as well as it did if it weren't, but it's worth checking.

``old system call'' is pretty weird, IMO.

To expand upon what Bitt said, check here and here.