problems configuring/compile the kernel

[Christopher B. <cj...@as...>]

I am a new user of the linuxconsole project
I am trying to get my Interact HammerHead joystick working under linux.
So, far I have encountered several problems trying to configure/compile the 
kernel.
I downloaded the ruby kernel source through the CVS.
During configuration of the kernel I ran into two problems in 
/ruby/linux/arch/i386/config.in (Rev. 1.42)
Configure failed when it could not find init/Config.in
This doesn't exist, so I commented out
source init/Config.in
You may want to add a check for the file before sourcing it?

An additional failure happened on the following lines
tristate 'Sound card support' CONFIG_SOUND
if [ "$CONFIG_SOUND" != "n" ]; then
   source sound/Config.in
fi
I added the drivers directory
if [ "$CONFIG_SOUND" != "n" ]; then
   source drivers/sound/Config.in
fi

After these two changes I was able to configure the kernel.
Compiling the kernel failed on
/ruby/linux/kernel/printk.c (Rev. 1.29)
with the following error message
printk.c:57: invalid initializer
printk.c:58: conflicting types for `console_printk'
printk.c:57: previous declaration of `console_printk'
printk.c:58: invalid initializer
printk.c:59: conflicting types for `console_printk'
printk.c:58: previous declaration of `console_printk'
printk.c:59: invalid initializer
printk.c:60: conflicting types for `console_printk'
printk.c:59: previous declaration of `console_printk'
printk.c:60: invalid initializer
printk.c: In function `console_conditional_schedule':
printk.c:582: warning: implicit declaration of function `need_resched'
make[2]: *** [printk.o] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-2.4.18-3/kernel'

Any suggestions on getting things to compile?   I don't know what the 
"warning: implicit declaration of function" message means.  Possibly this is 
okay I just need to set a compiler flag to skip this warning?  I am using 
RedHat 7.3 with kernel 2.4.18-3. Thanks.