GNU/Linux Desktop Survival Guide by Graham Williams
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Install Kernel 2.4.20

At the time of installing the NIC card (e10000) was not supported by the available Debian kernels. Kernel 2.4.20 fixed this. A kernel was compiled from source and patched up to 2.4.20-pre11. The default .config (i.e., starting from no .config file) was the starting point. Below is recorded the specific configurations added.

  # cd /usr/src
  # wget http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/linux-2.4.19.tar.gz
  # wget http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/testing/patch-2.4.20-pre11.gz
  # tar zxvf linux-2.4.19.tar.gz
  # cd linux-2.4.19
  # gzip -dc ../patch-2.4.20-pre11.gz | patch -p1 -N -F4
  # make menuconfig
    Processor type and features
        Processor family
            CONFIG_MPENTIUM4=y
    #General: Seem to get ``Can't get display ID errors''
    #        CONFIG_APM=y
    #        CONFIG_APM_DO_ENABLE=y
    #        CONFIG_APM_CPU_IDLE=y
    #        CONFIG_APM_DISPLAY_BLANK=y
    #        CONFIG_APM_RTC_IS_GMT=y
    Block devices
        RAM disk support
            CONFIG_BLK_DEV_RAM=y
        Initial RAM disk (initrd) support
            CONFIG_BLK_DEV_INITRD=y
    Network device support
        Ethernet (1000 Mbit)
            CONFIG_E1000=y
    Sound
            CONFIG_SOUND_ICH=y
  # make-kpkg clean
  # make-kpkg --append-to-version -gjw --revision edm01
              --initrd kernel_image
  # cd .. 
  # wajig install kernel-image-2.4.19-gjw_edm01_i386.deb

This works just fine and all standard drivers (CDROM and NFS) were included by default and the e1000 support included in the kernal. The resulting kernel is quite a bit smaller that the kernels supporting lots of hardware (700K initrd cf 2.4MB and 56K modules cf 20MB)!