Not a big deal, but mostly to point out my own error ...
Booted TCpure64 from a burned CD and did a frugal install to a hard drive.
The first thing I did with the CD was to get online, and download and install the tc-install-GUI.tcz extension. Proceeded to install to hd, no problem.
BUT, I forgot to add a VGA=xxx to be appended to the boot line.
After reboot, ended up at the commandline with "failed in waitforX".
The fix was simple: I just edited my /mnt/sda1/tce/boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf file, and appended vga=791 (which was ok for me, use your own values to suit your monitor) to the boot stanza. Upon reboot, bingo!
Not a big deal, just op error here by not supplying it during install...