As of two days ago, the debian-installer svn tree has been switched to use
Linux 2.6.15 exclusively on alpha, instead of the previous 2.4.27. This
means that with the most recent daily builds, all installer images for alpha
are using 2.6 kernels *only*, and the current plan is that d-i beta2 will be
the same. If you haven't tried 2.6 on your alpha yet, now would be a good
time so you can let us know if it doesn't work before we drop 2.4 for etch
completely.
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/daily-builds/daily/arch-latest/alpha/iso-cd/debian-testing-alpha-netinst.iso
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/daily-builds/daily/arch-latest/alpha/iso-cd/debian-testing-alpha-businesscard.iso
http://people.debian.org/~vorlon/d-i/alpha/daily/
Cheers,