I really couldn't say for sure. I'm quite new to picore so I was probably doing something wrong. What you say sounds right though. As the card is unmounted after boot it IS offline. Perhaps if I had actually installed more than just the GUI, say an editor, file manager, etc, I would have been able to find it, so I did put it in my lappie. Hopefully my depression will lesson by tomorrow, I've really had enough for now (connectivity, not picore) so I'll make the first in a long series of mistakes and then I'll try it your way.
Let's mark this one as solved.