FC3 on second disk, 3rd partition with new kernel hanging

[Richard Hubbell]

Installed FC3 on 2nd drive 3rd partition grub is on the 1st drive. 
FC3 boots most of the time
from the stock FC3 kernel and initrd.img (often it won't even boot
that, I get a kernel oops
from something called scsi_eh)   So I downloaded the latest 2.6.9 and
patched to 2.6.10.rc2
Built with and without initrd and I can't boot to a new kernel.  I get
to a point in the boot sequence and then it hangs with "Warning:
unable to open an initial console"
I think that the next step after that is for init to start and do its
thing.  Has anyone seen this?
Is it a problem when installing on separate drive or separate
partition?  I'm puzzled.  Does this type of config require initrd or
soemthing?  Thanks for any help.

Richard