need help with i2000 and AS2.1 or AW2.1

I have an HP i2000 workstation that I would like to install the
new Advanced Server 2.1 or Advanced Workstation 2.1 on.  
Unfortunately, it appears that the qlogic 1280 scsi driver that 
both these products contain (3.0 Beta) is too old for my qla12160 
card.  I found out that the RH 7.1 for Itanium has a 3.24 Beta 
driver that works just fine on the i2000.

I was able to build a kernel with a static version of the Advanced
Server 2.1 sources that included my 3.24 based qla1280 driver on 
another machine with the Advanced Server sources installed.  This
kernel works well enough to allow the install on an i2000 from a 
floppy (LS120) to proceed, but the resulting install didn't work.
(After the fact, it seemed clear why it didn't work since the old
qlogic driver was on the new root disk.)

The question is, how do I get the kernel install updated with my new
qla1280 module?  It seems that I should be able to extract and 
rebundle the kernel-2.4.18-e.12.rpm with my new driver and make a 
new CD, but unfortunately the man pages didn't give me enough info
to feel confident about doing this.  (I've already made a couple 
coasters on this one.  :)

Is there a better way to fix this issue?

                                        thanks,

                                                brent