I managed to get it running with the SuSE kernel when passing adma=0 to sata_nv module, and I managed to get it running when passing mem=2000M to the SuSE kernel. Thanks to Robert for those hints.
The vanilla kernels I tried 2.6.23.1 and 2.6.24-rc1-git10 (with patch to sata_nv.c from Robert Hancock see https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=351451) seem to be very sensitive in this area. Whenever I got them to oops, I did not have much time to get anything read on the screen.
I managed under the patched 2.6.24-rc1-git10 to manually load sata_nv and sr_mod, and then I got an OOps like
Unable to handle ... NULL pointer dref at 0000000000000000 RIP ffffff880edf6a
.....
libata:ata_qc_prep + 0xe2/0x15b
.....
srmod:sr_probe
I have attached 3 dmesg outputs with the openSuSE 10.3 kernel and extracts of /var/log/messages, especially some Oopses. The oopses from the vanilla kernels seem to be so bad that they do never end up in a file.
I will do some more tests as soon as possible. I have attached the files as I created them, you will have to diff the single files, anyway, to get the important information out, I cannot select for you.