Well I finally got the Musicshield to play music. I had to burn bootloader on a new ATMega 168 and drop that into my duemilanove. I don’t know why but that worked. I now have issues with the buttons not working. No volume or track advance or anything but progress nonetheless. I appreciate all the help and will continue trying. I am fairly new at this stuff and I will not avoid challenges, after all nobody is a “natural” at programming. But as a total newcomer to the Arduino world, I naively assumed that the source code that seeedstudio tests this thing with would at least perform the basic functions. I will say that the board is pretty inexpensive and that is part of what attracted me to it (that and the thought of SD for storage, recording, and the size). Now I need to study the basics of the code to get it to recognize the buttons and the ipod dock connector.
so that said glt, please repost when you get your Musicshield as I would like to see your progress and your project.
Thanks