I don't know exactly what you have done, or what you understand, but here is some info which will help.
The extensions now need to be in /tce/optional. Which may be /mnt/hda1/tce/optional.
Some things have changed. The easiest way may be to remove mydate.tgz, and set 2.8 up as a new installation. (You can make the necessary changes if you know what you are doing.) It is best to save a copy of any files you don't want to lose before updating Tiny Core.
After doing this and rebooting Tiny Core:
Open the Control Panel, and run Apps Audit, then OnBoot. Click on any programs you want to load automatically when starting Tiny Core.
Still in the Control Panel, run OnDemand. Select the numbers of any programs you don't want to load automatically when you start Tiny Core. These can be started from On Demand in the menu.
In earlier versions /tce/optional must be owned by tc:staff. This is probably still the case. If it is not, installing additional programs won't work. One way to do this is to create the optional directory in /home/tc with a normal file manager, and cut and paste it to the /tce directory with a root file manager.
I hope this helps.
If you have more questions, post them.