DOC interferes with linux boot

["Joseph M Dupre (AVAB Inc.)" <dupre@avab.com>]

I have a system with one of the 32 pin Disk-on-Chip devices.  The DOC
has the "default" formatting using TrueFFS and a single DOS
partition.  On a hard drive I've got Red Hat Linux 7.3.

When I try to load Linux, grub reports:

root (hd0,0)
 Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-3 ro root=/dev/hda1
   [Linux-bzimage, setup=0x1400, size=0xfcdc3]

Error 28: Selected item cannot fit into memory


If I remove the DOC, Linux boots correctly.
If I erase the binary (BDK) partition on the DOC (and thus removing
TrueFFS), Linux also boots correctly.

Can someone tell me why this is happening and if there is a remedy to
load the Linux kernel while keeping the DOC with it's default TrueFFS
configuration?

Thanks--
Joseph M. Dupré
Design Engineer
SAND Network Systems
+1 707 778 8990 x207