2.4.18 doesn't find my root device.

[Jim Lynch <jwl@sgi.com>]

Simple description: 2.4.18 kernel panics and says it can't find the root
device on 03:06.  2.2.19 finds it fine.  I had a root=/dev/hda6 on the
loadlin line, and it failed, so I took it off.  Rdev of the kernel also
says root
on /dev/hda6.

Background:
I upgraded to woody and found that my cdrom no longer worked.  I figured
something had broken the modules but recompiling and depmod and modprobe
didn't seem to fix the problem.  lsmod showed everything OK, but it
still didn't work.  I'm running a ide-scsi setup since this is a
writer.  
So I decided to upgrade the kernel to 2.4.18.  I got the
kernel-source-2.4.18 via apt-get.  Unbziped it.  Copied my .config from
2.2.19 to 2.4.18 and did a make oldconfig.  I pretty much answered all
the questions as no, which was default.  This is a 600 Mhz celeron
system.  Plain Jane. Did the make dep, make bzImage, make modules, make
modules_install.  Copied the bzImage to the DOS C: drive, modified a dos
script to use loadlin to boot and rebooted.

It looks like maybe there is a dump first thing, but the boot process
rushes by so fast I really can't tell.  Anyway somewere down the line,
it fails telling me it can't find a root device on 03:06.  The first
time it said something about not finding anything on hda6.  The loadlin
command is identical to the one I use for 2.2.19.  Is there something
else going on that I'm not aware of?  I saw a warning about using
initrd, whatever that is in my browsing the web.  Does that have
anything to do with it?

I've got another system that I attempted to compile 2.4.18 on.  Similar
setup.  Upgraded to woody, apt-get the kernel source.  Compiled,
installed, rebooted with loadlin and it gets through spitting out the
......... line, blanks the screen and reboots.  I'm not having a lot of
luck with 2.4.18.

Suggestions?

Thanks,
Jim.