Compact flash and 'GRUB GRUB'

[MAL]

I have a system with three hard disks, (hda, hdb and hdd), and a 128MB 
compact flash disk, (hdc), with C/H/S 978/8/32, (detected as that by both 
the BIOS and the kernel).

Using linux kernel 2.4.22, booting from hdd, I created a type  0x83 
partition on the compact flash, using the full size of the disk.  I then 
formatted it with ext2, copied a minimal linux system to it, chrooted to the 
partition, and ran grub.

I issed the commands:

root (hdc,0)
setup (hdc)

Which executed ok, (grub.conf and the relevant stages are in /boot/grub).

However when I boot the compact flash by selecting hdd2 in the BIOS, (being 
the third disk), I simply get 'GRUB GRUB' printed to the screen, and no more.

I tried booting the hard disk with the kernel parameter 'hdc=flash', then 
chrooting to the flash and installing grub, but this doesn't help.

I have had grub running fine on this same compact flash in this same 
motherboard, with a different linux kernel/system utils/grub version, (0.92 
I think), before.

Can anyone point out what's going wrong?

Cheers,
MAL