Help fixing black screen of death?

About a year ago, I had interest in jumping back in a game on my 1st gen fat ps3. The system booted up fine and had an update. Mid update, the screen went black and never came back to show anything, so I shut off the ps3. Now, when I turn it back on, it only goes to a black screen.

Things I have tried:

-Holding the power button to reset the video settings - no change

-Switching HDMI cables and also trying AV cable - no change

-Switching TVs - no change

-Holding the power to put the ps3 into safe mode - did not work. Safe mode does not seem to load up, and still only a black screen

-I bought a new HDD - This was the most encouraging attempt. The ps3 turned on properly and went through the OS installation process, but then immediately went back to a black screen.

-I've tried loading the latest ps3 firmware update onto a USB flash drive (formatted to FAT32) - no change

-When I turn on the ps3 with no HDD in the system - I do get a video signal and an error message that says "The appropriate system storage was not found"

The best attempts I have are related to the HDD. Though, I'm confused that I wasn't able to install the OS and fix the system using the new HDD...so I'm out of ideas at the moment.

Any help on this would be absolutely amazing!