Passing from 2.6.8-r2 to 2.6.8-r3 introduced some problems on my system (an IBM G40 ThinkPad). In fact, I noticed that the LED monitoring disk activity on 2.6.8-r3 is always on since the boot sequence until I don't halt the system. It worked right on 2.6.8-r2, and booting with that is ok. The other is bug #61832, could this be related?
Probably is the same thing. You can either wait for the next gentoo-dev-sources release or manually reverse the old 2310 patch, and apply the new 2130 that I posted on bug #61832.
Please retry with gentoo-dev-sources-2.6.8-r5
Please reopen if this is still an issue.