First off, I have been (and still am) an absolutely ecstatic user of TC 2.8.1 on my Eee 900. I wrote about my method of istallation on the wiki page under netbook tips. I'm pleased that one can still download that version of Tiny Core by going to
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/tinycorelinux/2.x/archive/?C=M;O=AHowever, I do like to contribute in my small way to this project and so I have been experimenting with TC 3.4.1. Since I don't have access to an ethernet connection or to a CD drive, I have been enjoying the challenge of setting up a USB-SDHC installation.
The good news is that I now have 3.4.1 operational, but it has some serious drawbacks.
1. 915resolution.tcz no longer has mode 50 1024 600, which I believe to be required for the Eee 900. (It does have that mode in the 2.x version.) Attempting to change modes using 915resolution has no effect whatsoever on my display, which I believe always comes up at 800x600 in TC 3.x.
2. Mouse movement is jerky and imprecise. This may be related to the problem mentioned above. Using the mouse tool in the control panel does not correct this.
3. A double-tap-and-hold on the track pad does not work as normal for dragging windows around or dragging slider bars. Nor can I use double-tap-and-drag to highlight text. There are also other oddities in mouse/track pad behavior.
4. I used to be able to connect my wifi with simple commands in bootlocal.sh, using iwconfig and udhcpc. Now I must use wicd. Perhaps I could somehow automate the process, but at the moment I must wait for the computer to fully boot into TC, open a terminal, type in sudo wicd-start, bring up the pop-up menu, start wicd, wait for it to open, and click on connect three times before I am connected to wifi. (Using TC 2.8.1, my Eee 900 can fully boot, connect to wifi, and open Opera in less than 30 seconds!) If I can solve the display and mouse problems mentioned above, I will give serious attention to figuring out how to speed up and automate wifi connection in TC 3.x on the Eee 900.
I would appreciate any hints about what I can do to fix these problems. (But please don't tell me to try Xorg instead of Xvesa. First, I have already tried that. I just can't get it to work in Tiny Core on the Eee 900. Second, I don't want that cruft on my computer. When I really must use GIMP or Open Office, I just boot into Xandros or Knoppix.)
Since TC 2.8 can be set up optimally for the Eee 900, none of these problems are urgent. They may not even be relevant, given that the Eee 900 is now obsolete. But still . . .