YAY: finally, kudos to 3 guys at Promise (Jerry, Stephen and Victor) (i hope, but everything seems to be working again, although i did lose all my older backups).
NUMBER ONE PROBLEM: MY IMAC DID NOT HAVE THE PROMISE UTILITY INSTALLED. I INSTALLED THAT FROM THEIR SITE DOWNLOAD CENTRE, BUT THEY ALSO SENT ME A LINK TO IT.
granted, they haven't quite released the fully-functional mavericks (osx 10.9) version yet, but the older one does work in command mode to get reports out of it.
AFTER THAT, IT WAS NOTED THAT MY FIRMWARE VERSION WAS OUT-OF-DATE, AND IT REQUIRES THE LATEST ONE TO WORK WITH MAVERICKS (PERMISSION ISSUES, SOMETHING I ALREADY SUSPECTED WAS HAPPENING BUT APPLE ERROR MESSAGES ARE GETTING TO BE LIKE MICROSOFT IT SEEMS)
NEXT ITEM, MAC USERS CAN'T DOWNLOAD THE FIRMWARE UPDATE FROM PROMISE AND EXPECT IT TO WORK, THE .IMG FILE THEY HAVE WON'T WORK UNDER MAVERICKS (APPLE'S NEW PROPRIETARY FILE FORMAT BS AGAIN I SUSPECT).
SO, YOU MUST-MUST-MUST HAVE THAT PROMISE UTILITY INSTALLED AND THEN 'CHECK FOR UPDATES'. THEN INSTALL THE UPDATE VIA THAT UTILITY. THE INSTRUCTIONS SAY TO POWER CYCLE YOUR PEGASUS OR REBOOT YOUR SYSTEM... YOU MUST-MUST-MUST DO BOTH.
THEN, GOD, DEMONS, AND OTHER ASSPORTED SAINTS AND PROPHETS (PROFITS?) PERMITTING, YOU'RE UP- AND-RUNNING AGAIN.
I SURE WISH THE **** SOMEONE HAD SAID ALL THIS A WEEK AGO INSTEAD OF 'OH YAH, WELL WE TESTED EVERYTHING AND OURS WORKS'
GET THE WORD OUT TO PROMISE USERS GUYS AND GALS... GET THAT PROMISE UTILITY AND DO YOUR DUE DILIGENCE!!!
AND IF YOU CAN'T GET THAT HD TO WORK... THEY WILL SEND YOU THEIR EMAIL ADDRESSES - THESE GUYS DO GET IT DONE (BUT ONLINE SUPPORT AT PROMISE.COM... PAH)