There must obviously be some configuration built into it, as it ``knows'' that it should be using Summer Time, but, in general, it needs a big database of timezone data to do that sort of stuff properly, and I doubt that the empeg has that database.

You could try ``TZ=EDT6 date'' and see if that works. It should pick up the 6 as an offset, and, since it doesn't have a Summer Time component, just use that directly.