When I plugged it into home power the empeg screen comes up but never goes away?

What, you wanted it to do something besides display a logo? What were you thinking?

All kidding aside, it sounds like:

a) You've got the USB cable plugged into a PC that's turned off (known bug), or
b) It's trying to boot but it's not finding its hard disks so it can't finish the boot process, or
c) It might have blank hard disks, too. Try downloading the latest software upgrade and running it via the serial port.

You can probably get some diagnostics by watching the serial port with Hyperterminal when you boot it. That might tell you what's going wrong.

Anyone have any other suggestions before he sends it back as a DOA unit?

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Tony Fabris