Ok a little more info on progress (at least there is some).
Found that the driver has a hard time telling that we have an SD card and not a MMC card. I commented out the if(mmc_card_sd(card)) line in mmc.c file. Now we get an unknown partition table. Also we cannot have the card inserted when the processor starts up. Also inserting a card will produce spurious results. Sometimes it gives me a command line some times it refuses to give me a command line back...
My hardware counterpart thinks it might be a clocking issue. Anyone have any clues.
Thanks for your time.