initramfs does nto exist in 2.4, but despite a dearth of information it works extremely well in 2.6.
Set CONFIG_INITRAMFS=path to directory tree to build into ramdisk, and the kernel building process will take care of most evrything else. Unlike initrd, there are not two separate files, that each have to be loaded. The initial ramdisk is part of the kernel image, gets uncompressed by the kernel, and is just generally painless - except for the scarcity of documentation.