I have an Abit NF7-v2.0, and a Western Digital Caviar 80GB. This locks hard with the aformentioned kernel. (current in cooker). It works fine with 2.4.21-0.16 compiled with gcc 3.2.2.
The system will work for a period, but then just locks, usually with the hard disk light on solid. hdparm -t says I'm getting 54MB per sec with 2.4.22, and 27.33 with 2.4.21, hope this provides a clue. I'm personally thinking its a gcc problem.