Greetings!

Well, at the moment, it looks like there is only one drive physically in the machine based on the boot log. - hda: IBM-DJSA-230, 28615MB w/1874kB Cache, CHS=58140/16/63

Is this the new drive that you were installing? Is it the old one? Is there anything on the hard drive connected?

Basically, from your log, this looks like a brand new drive, and that it cannot find the boot partition and root filesystem. - Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 03:05

If this is the new drive, you probably need to load the builder software to create the filesystems needed (this is a link to Mark's updated version for larger drives), and then you would need to reinstall the player with the upgrade file.

To load the builder software, download the linked file. Run the emplode upgrade utility, load the builder in. Make sure you have the player unplugged until the upgrade utility actively starts looking for the player. You only have a few second window (if that) to catch the upgrade loader on the empeg's firmware. Once that upload completes, the player should reboot. Yank the power immediately and set up hyperterm for another capture. Plug in the player - the upgrade file now should rebuild the partitions and filesystems on the brand new drive and perform a stress test (infinite loop). Your hyperterm connection will allow you to watch the progress, note any errors, hit "return" if needed, etc.

If that goes well, redo these steps with the 2.0 developer final software for the empeg. I see from your boot log that alpha3-11 was loaded, but best to start with 2.0 until you get things stable.

Edit: linked builder & added more detail