How to fix "Couldn't find valid RAM disk image starting at 0"?

[Daniel Barclay <dsb@smart.net>]

I've been having trouble booting from kernels I've built with make-kpkg
with the --initrd option.   My /etc/lilo.conf does has initrd=... lines.

When I try to boot a new kernel, it says:

   Couldn't find valid RAM disk image starting at 0
   
and says something about device 1601 / 16:01 (which disk and partition
is that?).

I built a kernel before with make-kpkg and --initrd and got it working
just fine, but can't figure out what I'm doing differently (and wrong)
this time.

Any pointers?

By the way, Lilo's lba32 option implies that keeping things below the
1024th cylinder of a disk is no longer relevant.  Is that actually 
correct?  Is it also correct for initrd images (/boot/initrd.img-...)?

Thanks,
Daniel
-- 
Daniel Barclay
dsb@smart.net