Well, maybe it's dumb luck, but I got it working. I put in some more time with the original player and the original DMS today. I kept formatting and flashing and it seems that something "clicked" in the flashing process because I could select my phatnoise again from the head unit. Everytime I tried it still got the flashing green, but it would stop after a minute. Still couldn't get it to play though, so I:
- formatted as discussed here
- loaded vw/audi 7.02 but did NOT tell it to reflash the player
- added the random file it was looking for as mentioned earlier
- ejected
- re-inserted, ran phathack wizard
- corrupted the ramdisk.sig
- ejected
- ran downstiars and outside, popped it into the player and BAM. I instantly got some chick telling me I now had a hacked box and I needed to remove the DMS to finish the process.
And when I say instantly, it was instant. No on and off, no waiting, it just clicked in, announced that, then started playing. So bizarre. It's like voodoo magic apparently. After all that it finally takes. Of course the kicker... I caved and bought another phatnoise setup today. Got a decent deal, $150 shipped, but it just figures I would give up and then it would finally work.
Thanks for all the help in here guys. I'll be hanging out now learning more about the setup, creating some DMS cartridges, and trying to not kill the thing again.