Charles,
> I made a directory at /mnt on the ramdisk, and mounted the first one.
> It also has a set of "/" directories the biggest being /dev
>
> There is a /boot directory which has a vmlinuz file pointing to what
> looks like a kernel
>
> I exited the rescue system, and restarted the machine, at the grub
> prompt I tried giving the kernel command as
>
> kernel /dev/hda1/boot/vmlinuz
The grub stanza should have an item that says
root (hd0,0)
That's what refers to the partition.
So, the kernel line only has to say
kernel /boot/vmlinuz
Also, if you have an initrd, there should be another line
that says
initrd /boot/initrd.img
cheerio,
bjb