Gethyn - ok, now I am really confused but happy! Basically I finally got grub-install to work but had to edit my device map first and remove fd0 (there is no floppy drive on this machine). hd0 is mapped to /dev/sdb (the only mapping in the file). Almost forgot the mention - my machine now boots!
Then everything appeared to work swimmingly.
Thanks to everyone who helped out.
Michael.