(I seem to make a habit of replying to my own posts shortly after making them...)
I think I might have tracked it down to being something in the custom kernel images rather than the hard drive images...
I was using Mark Lord's patches with some small patches of my own... so it looks like I am going to have to go through the source and see what might be causing the problem... Maybe some stray printks or something...
Cheers
Kim
PS I still wouldn't mind getting some further info on what the errors mean and possible causes... it would help trying to track down the fault