No subject

can see there are 

"Errors reported by the Stage 1.5
The general way that the Stage 1.5 handles errors is to print an error
number in the form 'Error num' and then halt. Pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL will
reboot.
   The error numbers correspond to the errors reported by Stage 2. See
section Errors reported by the Stage 2." 

And Error 17 in Stage 2 says:

"17 : Cannot mount selected partition
This error is returned if the partition requested exists, but the
filesystem type cannot be recognized by GRUB." 

Looking through /boot/grub/ I can see the grub.conf file, and stage1 and
stage2 files. There are several files that look like file-system types
for stage1.5 but no stage1.5 per se: e.g. e2fs_stage1_5 fat_stage1_5
ffs_stage1_5 minix_stage1_5  reiserfs_stage1_5 and vstafs_stage1_5 

So perhaps GRUB is coping with the RAID1 array md1 (mounted as /boot),
gets past stage1 but never gets to throw up the splash screen and the
menu. I was wondering if maybe I should copy a file or files into /boot
or /boot/grub to make it work. I was half expecting to see reference to
e3fs and/or md file types ...

Thank you for your interest, provision of a sounding board, and I'll go
sleep on it!

Cheers;
DaveR