Greetings!

Wow!

empeg single channel IDE
Probing primary interface...
hda: ÿ, ATA DISK drive
hda: ÿ, ATA DISK drive
ide0: unexpected interrupt, status=0x58, count=1
ide0 at 0x000-0x007,0x038 on irq 6
hda: ÿ, 2088991MB w/32640kB Cache, CHS=65535/25


And I thought I had a lot of hard drive space...

I would guess that either the hard drive controller was sick, the drive is toast or the cable is barely attached to the drive properly and sending gibberish. Since you are not even able to recognise the drive at this early stage, the errors you see below don't really matter.

Assuming it was working when it was shipped back, it sounds like there was something nasty in shipment, probably knocking a drive cable loose - but I never saw that kind of symptom for a loose cable before.

Contact support and see if they will let you check the connectors or look for anything fried. I assume you only have one drive in the unit?