Thanks for reading my response, and for replying. Sorry to show my frustration. I now understand that you aren't with Buffalo, and are merely offering assistance because you are nice. I suppose my expectation was that someone from Buffalo actually reads and responds to this forum!
Lack of technical documentation on the device does make things difficult.
At this point, what I assume is that if the firmware on the device is functioning, then the device should be able to perform at least a few tasks:
1. respond to pings
2. load boot code from the hard drive, if such code is present on the hard drive
and maybe even these tasks:
3. format a hard drive
4.. possibly install code onto hard drive using TFTP
If the device will at least still perform 1 and 2, then I could take care of tasks 3 and 4 "offline" by attaching a (new, non-hosed) hard drive to a PC and dd'ing an image onto the drive.
My impression is that the device is functioning, as I previously noted that the unit does power-up, manipulate the fan speed, flash LEDs in an apparently meaningful fashion, and respond to presses of the power-off button.
Maybe I should quit obsessing over the fact that the unit doesn't respond to pings, and instead focus on (a) getting a new hard drive, (b) installing it in a PC, (c) formatting it in whatever fashion that the device requires, (d) loading a bootable image onto the hard drive, and (e) installing the new hard drive into the unit.
I have been reluctant to pursue this path until I had more confidence in the device. I also lack doc on the formatting req'ts, and don't know what bootable image to load, or where to get it. Sure would be ncie if I could simply TFTP the code to the device :-)
I've invested some time into this, but maybe I should "ignore sunk costs" and abandon my efforts. But it's sometimes hard to give up on what has become a bit of a challenge :-)