I almost can't believe it ... finally you brave guys succeeded in spending another linux life to my
fairly ancient notebook 
Encouraged by gwalther's latest post I also gave TC2.9rc4 a try using embed and xsetup as boot options ...
Both my notebook and TC booted so smoothly as if they had fallen in love with each other

To get access to the online repository by appbrowser I still had to manually fix the pcmcia/ethernet/ip/dhcp stuff by
modprobe i82365
ifconfig eth0 up
udhcpc
Did I get the right clou, i.e. gcc's version 4.2.2 seems to have a bug and you already employed its newer version 4.3.3 since TC2.9rc4 !?
Many many thanks to all of you participants !