For the purposes of this thread (with a working u-boot and a working kernel+initramfs) ....
In u-boot, add: rdinit=/bin/sh (or /bin/ash if that doesn't work) and then tell u-boot to continue the boot process.
That will give you a busybox ash shell rather than run the initramfs shell scripting.
Then you can "rescue and bring up" the system from the memory resident system that is known to run "by hand".
Ref:
http://www.linuxtopia.org/online_boo...tion/re63.html