I have a weird issue with my empeg. It boots, and then displays auxiliary and shows an empty battery icon on the upper left (it's on DC power). Then it doesn't respond to any input - from the front console, the remote, via Emplode, Hijack web server. It boots, and turns on, so not sure if it's broken? I tried to see if I could flash the firmware but nope, that didn't work.

Try hooking it up to your computer with the serial connection made and plug in the player. Capture the boot log. When the boot begins to load the player application, hit "CTRL-C" to stop the boot. You should be at a shell prompt. Try "player -i" and see if that helps. That should restart the player without any playlist configuration, and might bring it up cleanly.