newbie build question - errors building against 2.6.15.6

Please excuse this if it's been answered before, but I can't seem to get past the build errors (see below) while trying to build
comedi-0.7.70

 

Here the background:

1) The base distro is VectorLinux 5.1 (distro uses 2.6.12)

2) Installed plain vanilla 2.6.15.6 kernel from kernel.org

3) Patched kernel with RTAI-3.3 patch (/base/arch/i386/patches/hal-linux-2.6.15-i386-1.2-00.patch)

4) Kernel builds ok, RTAI builds ok, and comedilib builds ok

 

. but I get the following errors when trying to build comedi-0.7.70:

 

 

[root_at_vl51~/downloads/comedi-0.7.70]# make

make  all-recursive

make[1]: Entering directory `/root/downloads/comedi-0.7.70'

Making all in comedi

make[2]: Entering directory `/root/downloads/comedi-0.7.70/comedi'

Making all in .

make[3]: Entering directory `/root/downloads/comedi-0.7.70/comedi'

if gcc -m32 -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -I..    -I../include/ -DKBUILD_MODNAME=comedi -DKBUILD_BASENAME=comedi_fops -Wall -Wundef
-Wstrict-prototypes -Wno-trigraphs -fno-strict-aliasing -fno-common -ffreestanding -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe -msoft-float
-mpreferred-stack-boundary=2 -march=i686 -mcpu=pentium4 -I/root/downloads/linux-2.6.15.6/include/asm-i386/mach-default -D__KERNEL__
-I/root/downloads/linux-2.6.15.6/include -include include/linux/autoconf.h -DMODULE   -g -O2 -MT comedi_ko-comedi_fops.o -MD -MP -MF
".deps/comedi_ko-comedi_fops.Tpo" -c -o comedi_ko-comedi_fops.o `test -f 'comedi_fops.c' || echo './'`comedi_fops.c; \

then mv -f ".deps/comedi_ko-comedi_fops.Tpo" ".deps/comedi_ko-comedi_fops.Po"; else rm -f ".deps/comedi_ko-comedi_fops.Tpo"; exit 1;
fi

<command line>:138332986:52096: include/linux/autoconf.h: No such file or directory

comedi_fops.c: In function `comedi_init':

comedi_fops.c:1798: warning: implicit declaration of function `class_simple_create'

comedi_fops.c:1798: warning: assignment makes pointer from integer without a cast

comedi_fops.c:1808: warning: implicit declaration of function `class_simple_destroy'

comedi_fops.c:1826: warning: implicit declaration of function `class_simple_device_add'

comedi_fops.c: In function `comedi_cleanup':

comedi_fops.c:1843: warning: implicit declaration of function `class_simple_device_remove'

make[3]: *** [comedi_ko-comedi_fops.o] Error 1

make[3]: Leaving directory `/root/downloads/comedi-0.7.70/comedi'

make[2]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1

make[2]: Leaving directory `/root/downloads/comedi-0.7.70/comedi'

make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1

make[1]: Leaving directory `/root/downloads/comedi-0.7.70'

make: *** [all] Error 2

 

Am I missing a patch? Is there some intermediate step I missed?

Thanks for any help!

 

-bill