The wakepup2 boot floppy is as Robert said way more complicated than is needed for tc. As it turns out, here's all I needed for my dell 640 laptop:
1.) A dos boot floppy disk
2.) usbaspi.sys driver
3.) Di1000dd.sys driver (maps the usb device to a drive letter)
4.) The tc files bzimage and tinycore.gz on the usb flash drive
Here's a link to the panasonic dos usb support files:
http://panasonic.co.jp/pcc/products/drive/cdrrw/kxlrw40an/download.htmlLook in the F2H subdirectory for the drivers including ramfd.sys.
Create config.sys file with:
DEVICE=HIMEM.exe
FILES=30
BUFFERS=20
device=USBASPI.SYS /R /v
device=Di1000dd.SYS
LASTDRIVE=Z
Create autoexec.bat file with:
cls
echo Booting Tinycore Linux
linld image=c:\bzimage initrd=c:\tinycore.gz "cl=quiet vga=788 waitusb=5"
Things to keep in mind:
1.) My experience is that the usbaspi driver does not assign a drive letter so that's what Di1000dd.SYS does.
2.) The boot process can be slow because all usb components are scanned. There may be switch options to improve this, I'll look into this later.
3.) The usb flash drive must be formated fat16
4.) The flash drive letter assigned can be determined by the looking at the D1000dd.sys output message. It was c: for me.
5.) TC boot codes like waitusb=5 can be added as shown above.
Thanks Robert for your input on this matter. You had the key linld syntax that makes everything work.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
edit: Here are some useful switch codes for usbaspi:
/e EHCI, for enabling only USB 2.0 controller
/o OHCI, for enabling only add-on/onboard USB 1.1 controller
/u UHCI, for enabling integrated USB 1.1 controller
The /e option substantially reduced my boot time.