100% well done! Thanks!!

For this protection, I am very grateful. So stupid that I didn't realize what I was doing myself. 25 years ago I had this process down cold...too much time.

So I got the kernel flashed on both units.

I'm installing the mlord's car2-v21.upgrade presently via emplode on Wine (onto the newer unit with a legacy 60G drive.) Still in the "pumping partition" phase and in the process it did throw an "0000.17 hda: err: stat_err" message on the player screen, even so, things seem to be still progressing.

THANKS AGAIN TO ALL!!!

Success! I've successfully updated player kernels to the latest Hijack 526.

On the Mark 2a previously mentioned, I was getting the hda: err: Stat_err message. Suspecting a HD fail I've tried to recover with Spinrite, but found no issues/errors. I've realigned the pins further and attempted again...this time it went, but in my exuberance, I selected the builder_bigdisk_v21.upgrade and wiped my content. :-(

I know there are explicit warnings that all data will be wiped, but any chance of some kind of a recovery with binwalk or some such tool? It was dumb, but I was so excited it was working I forgot I'd changed from new media back to my disk with content (I was initially trying to get a CF card and/or a M.2 SSD drive going in it and not being successful--which is why I had the builder_bigdisk in the first place.)

On the other (older Mark 2) player, I've installed the latest car2-v21.upgrade w/o issue. Shiny!!!

Huge thanks!!

Wiped, means Wiped!