[TriLUG] gentoo kernel panic - cannot open /newroot/dev/console

[z]

I just finished another new install of Gentoo which went very well until I 
rebooted and got the following errors during boot
...
STEP 5c: 	redirect console
		mknod: /newroot/dev/console: No such file or directory
		linuxrc: 277 : cannot open /newroot/dev/console: No such file
		kernel panic: Attempted to kill init!

At this pont I can only power off.

The kernel compiled successfully using the command
"genkernel --menuconfig all"
using gentoo-sources-2.4.22-r7 source with the following output:

kernel compiled successfully!
Required Kernel Params:
: root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc real_root=/dev/$ROOT
  where $ROOT is the device node for your root partition as
  you should have specified in /etc/fstab
You MUST tell your bootloader to use the generated initrd.
Recommended Kernel Params 
	:vga=0x317 splash=verbose

I have three partitions
/dev/hda1	/boot	(ext3)
/dev/hda2 	swap
/dev/hda3 	/	(reiserfs)

This is my grub.conf params

#Gentoo
root (hd0,0)
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/kernel-2.4.22-gentoo-r7 root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc 
real_root=/dev/hda1
initrd (hd0,0)/boot/initrd-2.4.22-gentoo-r7

I tried changing the $ROOT paramater to /dev/hda3 and got the following error
...
STEP 4a : Mounting root
mount: Mounting /dev/hda3 on /newroot failed: Invalid argument
Could not mount specified ROOT, try again
Root block device unspecified or not detected
Please specify a device to boot, or "shell" for a shell.

Any advice would be helpful,

z

PS I followed a stage3 install and did a "emerge sync" to get the latest 
portage tree before compiling the kernel and reboot.
I also tried subscribing to the gentoo list but never get a response from 
their server - anyone else on that list having issues?