a solution is much simpler : do not mount the drives at all. As long as all relevant files and commands are installed on the root partition, everything will work fine; the exec'ed init will mount the drives correctly...
I hadn't thought of this because I threw out the original init a few weeks after I got my empeg. This also explains some of the problems with displayserver.
It's kind of strange to see /dev/hdb in the boot messages and use /dev/hdc in the OS. Is there just some device-file rename going on ?

Frank van Gestel