Well, I thought I had it licked. I finally got the copy from my external hard drive to show up in the Mac iTunes correctly (i.e., with all the proper songs, podcasts, apps, etc.), BUT
all the songs and many of the other items had an exclamation point in front of them (a subsequent Google search suggests I should have called it a "dreaded" exclamation point). Clicking on these items produced a message saying,
"The song could not be played because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?” At which point I seem to have returned to square one. This appears to be an issue going back to at least the advent of the iPod, judging by the multitude of blog posts, forum discussions, etc. I've run across trying to find a solution (jocampo, I can completely empathize with your five-hour plus time investment, and can raise you five more). Oh well, 2:30 a.m. here - guess I'll give it another go tomorrow (Ain't life grand?
).