okay, so I know that my computer can see the player, because the control center's hardware manager (mandriva 2005Le) can see it and says it's PCI device #3, but when I try to open either gnomad2 or kzenexplorer, both say that they cannot find any jukeboxes, any suggestions?

Kzenexplorer only works as root for me. Have you tried that?

my problem is that the usb device is not getting assigned a /dev/ address when I plug it in. All of the nessisary modules are loaded, this is the /var/log/messages:

ec 27 12:01:00 192 kernel: usb 1-2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 5
Dec 27 12:01:00 192 CROND[17883]: (root) CMD (nice -n 19 run-parts /etc/cron.hourly)
Dec 27 12:03:44 192 kernel: SCSI subsystem initialized
Dec 27 12:03:44 192 kernel: Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
Dec 27 12:03:44 192 kernel: usbcore: registered new driver usb-storage
Dec 27 12:03:44 192 kernel: USB Mass Storage support registered.

that's all, it does not get a /dev/sda1 address like it should

then, when I unplug the player, and plug it back in, it says

Dec 27 13:20:25 192 kernel: usb 1-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 7

and nothing else.

my fstab file:
/dev/hda1 / ext3 defaults 1 1
/dev/hda6 /home/ ext3 defaults 1 2
none /mnt/floppy supermount dev=/dev/fd0,fs=ext2:vfat,--,umask=0,iocharset=iso8859-1,sync,codepage=850 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda5 swap swap defaults 0 0

/tmp/app/1/image /tmp/app/1 cramfs,iso9660 user,noauto,ro,loop,exec 0 0
/tmp/app/2/image /tmp/app/2 cramfs,iso9660 user,noauto,ro,loop,exec 0 0
/tmp/app/3/image /tmp/app/3 cramfs,iso9660 user,noauto,ro,loop,exec 0 0
/tmp/app/4/image /tmp/app/4 cramfs,iso9660 user,noauto,ro,loop,exec 0 0
/tmp/app/5/image /tmp/app/5 cramfs,iso9660 user,noauto,ro,loop,exec 0 0
/tmp/app/6/image /tmp/app/6 cramfs,iso9660 user,noauto,ro,loop,exec 0 0
/tmp/app/7/image /tmp/app/7 cramfs,iso9660 user,noauto,ro,loop,exec 0 0

/dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom auto umask=0,user,iocharset=iso8859-1,sync,codepage=850,noauto,ro,exec,users 0 0
/dev/sda1 /mnt/zen vfat noauto,users,rw,umask=1000 0 0

UPDATE!
(and shameless bump)

I have gotten it to work when in storage mode, and mount properly, but unfortunately, not in the way so that I can transfer files, ie, it's not being mounted correctly when not in "mass storage device" mode