first, let me state thank you to everyone yet again... your advice was spot-on. i did have a straight-through cable accidentally stored with my empeg instead of the original null modem cable. now, to vent and share a story that will hopefully give a few laughs let me summarize the encounter i just had at a local CompUSA...

me: hi. i can't seem to find your null modem cables. i'm looking for one that's 9-pin female on both ends. i don't see any at all, let alone ones that are that spec.
tech1: (like he didn't believe i knew what i wanted) what are you trying to do with it?
me: i'm trying to terminal connect to a unix shell on an embedded device that supports serial port connections from my computer.
tech1: you have a shell account and your modem isn't dialing? what?
me: no. not a shell account. i'm not talking about the internet. i have a piece of hardware that i want to connect to using a terminal application. in order to connect the device to my computer for this purpose i need a null modem cable, preferably one with DB9 female ports on each end since those are the size comm ports on both the device and the computer.
tech1: uhm, this cable here should do it for you. (hands me straight-through laplink cable with 9-pin female ends.)
me: no. that's not a null modem cable. that is a data transfer cable. (another tech starts to take notice of the situation) i have a cable like this and accidentally tried to use it for my purpose so i know that it's not going to work. what i need will say "null modem" on the packaging.
tech1: well, this has the ends you need. so this must be the cable... i don't think we have any cables here that are called null modem cables.
tech2: sure we do, they're right here.
me: *sigh of relief to have someone who knows what they're talking about*
tech2: (handing me a modem cable) here, see... it says right on it "modem cable."
me: (looking for someplace to bang my head) i don't know how to descibe the number of ways that this isn't what i need. first of all, this cable has one end male, the other end female. also, this cable has one end that's DB-9 and the other is DB-25. and also... this is a MODEM cable... not a NULL MODEM cable.
tech2: what's the difference between the two of them?
me: groan.
tech1: describe what you needed it for again?

i walked away and found a third tech who understood what i was talking about and confirmed that compusa didn't have any null modem cables at all in stock... or possibly doesn't even carry them in stores anymore. i ended up just buying a belkin null modem adapter (DB-25 on both ends) and using a modem cable in my house and a 25-pin to 9-pin converter that i had in a drawer to assemble the cable that i needed.

long story short, it did the job and the empeg is making a filesystem on my new hard disk as i type this. but now i'm wondering... how many times is hdstress.cpp supposed to test the hard disk? it's been going on and on and on for like five minutes now, just speed testing, seek testing, and so forth over and over.