I've tried compiling the 2.4.22 kernal on my PC. It has no IDE drives, but has 3 SCSI drives instead. After the drives get checked out, I am greeted with this kernel panic:-

Mounting root filesystem
mount: error 19 mounting ext3
pivotroot: pivot_root(/sysroot,/sysroot/initrd) failed:2
umount /init/proc failed: 2
Freeing unused kernel memory : 100k freed
Kernel panic: No init found: Try passing init= option to kernel.

Just why won't my filesystem mount? What the heck is mount error 19 anyway? All my partitions are ext3 (except the swap partition of course)

By the way, I am using GRUB as a bootloader

You need the SCSI drivers and ext3 fs compiled into the kernel (not modules). Assuming this is true, I'm not sure what the problem is.