FWIW, here's a copy of an fsck I did on the Good player a day or so ago when I started messing with the problem player:

Starting bash.
empeg:/empeg/bin# ro
empeg:/empeg/bin# umount /dev/hda4
empeg:/empeg/bin# umount /dev/hdc4
empeg:/empeg/bin# swapon /swapfile
Adding Swap: 16028k swap-space (priority -1)
empeg:/empeg/bin# fsck -fay /
Parallelizing fsck version 1.19 (13-Jul-2000)
e2fsck 1.19, 13-Jul-2000 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09
ext2fs_check_if_mount: No such file or directory while determining whether /dev/
hda5 is mounted.
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information
/dev/hda5: 1514/4096 files (0.5% non-contiguous), 9457/16384 blocks
empeg:/empeg/bin# fsck -fay /dev/hda4
Parallelizing fsck version 1.19 (13-Jul-2000)
e2fsck 1.19, 13-Jul-2000 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09
ext2fs_check_if_mount: No such file or directory while determining whether /dev/
hda4 is mounted.
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
fsck -fay /dev/hdc4
swapoff /swapfile
sync
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information
/dev/hda4: 16233/609728 files (24.2% non-contiguous), 34552704/78043770 blocks
empeg:/empeg/bin# fsck -fay /dev/hdc4
Parallelizing fsck version 1.19 (13-Jul-2000)
e2fsck 1.19, 13-Jul-2000 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09
ext2fs_check_if_mount: No such file or directory while determining whether /dev/
hdc4 is mounted.
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information
/dev/hdc4: 30993/609728 files (25.8% non-contiguous), 77809903/78043770 blocks
empeg:/empeg/bin# swapoff /swapfile
empeg:/empeg/bin# sync
empeg:/empeg/bin# exit
logout
Shell exit

As you can see, it found no problems like I had with my other player.

Quote:
What sort of brokenness are we talking about here? Extra FIDs in playlists? FIDs missing? Nonsense fids (e.g. not multiple of 16)? Are both players the same software version?

I'm talking about FIDs with 0 (zero) refs, which I should have none of. I'm talking about when I find those FIDs and copy them to paste them into the playlist they belong to, I find additional FIDs in those playlists that don't belong there in the first place.

For example: I open my player in Emplode and it opens with a warning that the lenght of playlist XXX does not match what it should have been, at this point I know I have a problem. I click the "All Tracks" selection and see that all the songs belonging to the CD Social Distortion - Somewhere Between Heaven & Hell have zero refs. I copy these songs from the All Tracks window and proceed to paste them where they SHOULD HAVE BEEN. The playlist folder for that CD still exists so I open it to paste the songs and find that there are random songs from Bad Religion are in there. I paste the Social D stuff and copy the Bad Religion stuff to go put it where it goes and find things in the Bad Religion folder that aren't supposed to be there. This basically goes on and on until I too frustrated by the mess to continue the reconstruction.

Additionally, both players are 2.0 final with hijack v417