After a day of tinkering, ICEH, MaDsKiLLz and I have discovered a major bug whilst running Kernel 2.4.23. Basically, the kernel would Oops and totally lock the system up in what appears to be a filesystem error:

Message from syslogd@Pro at Sun Nov 30 22:07:48 2003 ... Pro kernel: journal-601, buffer write failed

I'm looking into a solution right now (probably revert to 2.4.22 with the new fatx patches etc...). I'll let you know as soon as its ready! Sorry!