Works fine with this test setup
title Tiny Core on sda1 (home=sda4 opt=sda4 local=sda4 base norestore)
kernel (hd0,0)/tinycore/bzImage waitusb=5 quiet host=dev home=sda4 opt=sda4 local=sda4 base norestore tz=PST+8PDT,M3.2.0/2,M11.1.0/2 settime
initrd (hd0,0)/tinycore/tinycore.gz
Lets start by looking at a couple of files. Is your hda3 listed in fstab?
Please post the output of fdisk -l and cat /etc/fstab