Mount of root fs oopses on AMD K6, kernel option 'splash' did it...

After successfull install of Ubuntu 4.10 PR system stops at boot while trying to
mount root. When removing the 'splash' kernel boot option from
/boot/grub/menu.lst the system boots fine. I do not see how 'splash' is related
to 'mount'.

Here's all I could find on the screen. Had to type it over by hand :)

---------------------------------
  Booting 'Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.8.1-2-386 '

root (hd0,4)

 Filesystem type is jfs, partition type 0x83

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.8.1-2-386 root=/dev/hda5 ro quiet splash

   [Linux-bzImage, setup=0x1400, size=0x109997]

initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.8.1-2-386

   [Linux-initrd @ 0x1fba9000, 0x437000 bytes]

savedefault

boot

Uncompressing Linux... Ok, booting the kernel.

Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virtual address 0000000c

 printing eip:

*pde = 00000000

Oops: 0000 [#1]

PREEMPT

Modules linked in:

CPU: 0

EIP: 0060:[<c024bd90>] Not tainted

EFLAGS: 00010002 (2.6.8.1-2-386)

EIP is at __down+0x44/0xef

eax: 00000008 ebx: 00000286 ecx: dfaffe18 edx: dfafe000

esi: 00000000 edi: dfaffe20 ebp: dfedc600 esp: dfaffe0c

ds: 007b es: 007b ss: 0068

Process mount (pid: 193, threadinfo=dfafe000 task=dfedc600)

Stack: 00000001 dfedc600 c01161e1 00000000 00000000 00000001 00000000 00000282

       c13f6ce0 c028d8c0 dfb67000 0039d524 c024bf64 00000000 000009f2 1fb67000

       c017fb99 dfb92200 00000000 c13f6ce0 df99c718 00000000 dfb72420 c012dfdf

Call Trace:

 [<c01161e1>] default_wake_function+0x0/0x12

 [<c024bf64>] __down_failed+0x8/0xc

 [<c017fb99>] .text.lock.inode+0x7d/0x8c

 [<c012dfdf>] page_cache_read+0x53/0xb7

 [<c012e20b>] filemap_nopage+0x1c8/0x30d

 [<c013943a>] do_no_page+0xa6/0x2cf

 [<c0139797>] handle_mm_fault+0x6c/0x125

 [<c0114c0d>] do_page_fault+0x14d/0x49f

 [<c0143eb4>] filp_open+0x41/0x49

 [<c0157844>] dput+0x1a/0x1cc

 [<c0145675>] __fput+0xd5/0xf8

 [<c0144293>] filp_close+0x5a/0x63

 [<c0114ac0>] do_page_fault+0x0/0x49f

 [<c0106a1d>] error_code+0x2d/0x38

Code: 8b 50 04 89 44 24 0c 89 48 04 89 0a 89 54 24 10 ff 46 04 8b

 <6>note: mount[193] exited with preempt_count 1