well, I am now a happy man. I took Eric's hint and just a bzImage as the input to mkelfImage and everything works fine.
Now there's a different problem. Linux seems to have forgotten how to assign interrupts to PCI devices as of 2.4.1x. Or so it seems. On both the M810LMR and the L440GX Linux can't seem to figure out what the IRQ for the Ethernet is, and so deconfigures it. Anybody have any thoughts on why Linux is no longer setting up the IRQ? thanks ron
