Dan Hatton wrote:

I wasn't in the IRC discussion, so apologies if I'm going over old ground. Are you trying to mount your root filesystem from an IDE drive? If so, please note that kernel-image-2.4.18-686 doesn't have IDE support compiled in. I've decided to blame that for my inability to run this kernel, and it could also be to blame for yours.

kernel-image-2.4.18-bf does have IDE support compiled in, but I can't run that either, because it's too big for Loadlin. If you're using a boot-loader other than Loadlin, you might have more luck.

This sounds excitingly likely....I'll give this a go as soon as I get home (well, after I've fed the kids and dogs and cats and gone to karate to kick people). I think it is IDE. This will explain something that has been puzzling me for weeks if it works. I'm using LILO. Will let you know the outcome. Ta Jenny