Repost: FC6 kernel lockup when ripping CD on laptop

["Wade Hampton" <wadehamptoniv@xxxxxxxxx>]

G'day and Happy New Year,

I am trying to rip CDs for my wife's
new MP3 player but am having problems with my laptop. I successfully
ripped several without issue but now my laptop seems to lock up soon
after starting the rip process (drives spins up, then stops, nothing
works, have to hard reboot).  The system is FC6 with updates, x86_64:

Gateway mx6421 laptop, DVD+-R drive, 512M RAM, bcm43xx wireless 
  - wireless using kernel driver (another mail about this one)

Fedora Core 6, 2.6.18-1.2868.fc6 #1 SMP, grip-3.2.0-14.fc6, x86_64
  - all updates applied, this was an upgrade from FC5, took 20 hours (prev. report)

Note, the sky2 driver for this laptop finally works (bug
reported to RedHat, now apparently fixed, with FC5 and earlier kernels
the sky2 driver would stop working after a few minutes).  

Any help would be most appreciated.