I managed to break my Dell's installation of Mandrake. I was reconfiguring and recompiling the kernel (again) in order to try and get my wacom tablet working. (It doesn't seem to have helped.)

Now Linux does a kernel panic and complains about not being able to find init. This is even if I use the failsafe mode.

See what I mean about knowing enough to be dangerous but only occasionally knowing enough to fix it. Bleh.

Anyway, I think I've found out how to fix it. We'll see tonight.