Thanks everyone for the replies.
I downloaded Knoppix 3.6.  Same result (no go)

Then I formatted the drive as FAT on an XP machine.
Now I could read and write data under both Linux and XP.
But when I tried to play the music, the player crashed hard
and wouldn't even turn off.

I googled around some more and found a link to a
USB format utility:
ftp://ftp.compaq.com/pub/softpaq/sp...500/SP27213.exe

After I formatted the MP3 player with that utility,
everything worked.  I can read and write it from both
Mdk and Win2k and XP, and it plays the music OK.

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