Alpha setup

[Vittorio <vdemart@supereva.it>]

I installed a perfectly working debian 3.0 on a EV5 Compaq Alpha WS,
running the 2.2.20 boxed kernel image.

Now I've been trying to install the 2.4.18 (or better the new 2.4.20)
kernel image but I've been invariably ending up in a kernel panic. I think that
the problem is that I was unable to say my Alpha WS that it should
have used initrd at booting time as only hinted by the installation
documentation (very poor indeed!). 

Could someone out there explain (step by step) how I can tell such a
WS that I want to use initrd?

Ciao
Vittorio