Ok... restoring my C3000 to stock was quite the edjumacation. Having gone through that I think I could have solved my original problems just using the DB boot, fdisk, and mkfs. That's how I finally got the stock rom to boot, as it was just as unhappy as the 3kb1 rom.
That said, I finally have a stock machine localized to English (Thanks Trisoft!)
However, I'm back to attempting to get Cacko 3kb1 installed. I downloaded, after a lot of searching and frustration with Japanese character webpages, a file called zImage_v18a_c3000.bin in an attempt to install the Tetsu special kernel. However, every time I put this file (renamed as zImage.bin) on my CF and reflash the kernel, the system fails to boot. All I get is a slight "flashover" (i.e. LCD is birght, then dims) of the LCD and then it remains blank.
So... did I download the correct image?
Am I waiting long enough for the kernel to do it's work?
I'm so happy to have my Z booting again, but I really want the "chatty" boot mode of the Tetsu kernel back.