How to build a kernel which boots from SATA?

[Michael Bienia <michael@vorlon.ping.de>]

Hello,

I've got a new amd64 box and so far everything works fine. But I didn't
get my prism54 card working (it works in my old i386 box). Reading
http://prism54.org/phpwiki/Prism54%20Debian%20HowTo I assume some kernel
options are wrong. So I tried to build a new kernel (2.6.8-rc2) but I
didn't get it to boot from my SATA disk. The installed kernel
(2.6.7-5-amd64-k8-smp) boots fine (module is sata_via).
I tried to compile all necessary drivers into the kernel but it didn't
boot (the error message was AFAIR
Kernel Panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0) )
I also tried to use the configuration from the working kernel and only
change the needed options but I also didn't get it to boot (as I
normally don't use a initrd, is "mkinitrd -o /boot/initrd.img-2.6.8-rc2 2.6.8-rc2"
the right command to build the initrd?).

What is the correct way to build a kernel which boots from a SATA disk?

Michael