Okay, to cap this all off, wow was that a pleasant surprise. Gave in and got the trial, shot in the dark... and lo, that file that repeats the alphabet over and over again (hey, look in a hex editor) is valid, with all the work in place, and most of it embedded -- impressive, considering every time I'd seen it prior, the file reported as 4k...
As to cracking, I'm not particularly enthused by the idea of screwing around with a founding member of the BSA, myself -- especially with the 'Free' alternatives available -- and I figure that wouldn't exactly send the best message to the student here; considering the school isn't teaching 'workflow' and is barely conveying (as I get to hear it, anyway) technique, I think the only thing it can teach is to demonstrate how unsustainable the whole ball of wax is.
I could go on and on about that, but hey... breakfast beer toast to X-Ray, and much obliged to everyone else, including whoever's been downloading the whole thing as I type this. :pint: If you haven't heard, at least part of the moral is apparently to keep FAT-formatted USB widgets (or quite possibly hotpluggable anything) away from OS X pre-10.3.9.
Edit: Okay, taking the server down now, before I waste anyone else's time. :-D
