TinyCore -- the plot thickens; Frugal install and VMs

This post to the TC forums informed me that my install to the EeePC HDD was NOT in fact a "frugal" install.
OK, that probably explained why my boot time was a dissappointly high 35 seconds.
So, I tried the fugal install as directed in this and some further posts in this thread.
However, no matter what I did, I always got an Error 2 (bad file or directory type). This appraently means that either the file (bzImage) is not available or it's not a full file (for example might be a symlink).
Some things I did to try to get it to boot were:
1. Copied bzImage from /dev/sdb10 where it works perfectly (traditional HD install)
2. Commented out initrd line (the fact that this didn't work suggests that the bzImage file is not being recognized)
3. Substituted root=/dev/hdd7 with a large number of other permutations
4. Run the kernel line without root=/dev/hdd7
5. Try some variations on the root (hd1,6) theme.
Results? In summary nothing worked.
I just don't understand this -- very, very strange.

In a later post to the same thread, the possibility of using a VM of TinyCore to compile the rt2860 sta driver was mentioned.
So, I tried this and actually managed to get the driver (rt2860sta.ko.gz) created. However, still haven't been able to send it out so I can use it in the native TinyCore.
My intention is to setup Dillo (available in TCE) and either cl1p.net or email to send it out.
However, as I haven't been able to get vmwaretools installed this VM is a bit dodgy. In particular, in AppBrowser (which is a very nice, simple package manger tool), the Install option only works ocassionally. It seems a better option to Download Only and then use the File option to load the downloaded .tce.
Another observation is that during the booting of the VM, often a No OS found error occurs. To get out of this just click the Reset button (in the wide dropdown menu).