I tried with 2.4.24-based netboot installer from the same directory, clearing the partition table with dd before. Still the same - it created 2T sda3 and then failed. So it seems to be not kernel-specific but rather parted.
Oot, I was wrong. It still created the 2T sda3 entry in /proc/partitions but later actually wrote correct partition table and did not fail.
-- Meelis Roos