I want to set up linux on my windows 2000 box, without
using partition software and having to set up multiple boot partitions.

1. The first thing I need to do is to be able to boot linux from an enternal drive(1 gb usb memory stick). Can this be done? If so, how. This boot device would have a bare bones workstation linux on it( Fedora core 1).

If it is not possible to boot linux from a usb drive, then
I would like to boot from a cd or a dvd.

2. Assuming that step 1 can be done, I then need a way
to create a "bare bones" linux boot device, based
on a current linux distro.

3. assuming that there is an way to do step 1 and step 2
I then want to install the "rest" of linux to an external
drive(usb or firewire)

This would allow me to evaluate linux without impacting my
current windows 2000 system.

I have tried "standalone" linux distros. They work ok,
but don't allow me to install parts of linux on
hard drives.

I have 2 computers
pc #1 windows 2000, 1 internal drive, 3 external drives
pc #2 windows 2003, 2 internal drives

The target pc is pc #1.
The linux products that I am evaluating are
Fedore Core 1 and Vector Linux.

Making a USB Stick or drive bootable may be down to your BIOS primarily - so the first thing you need to check is if your motherboard actually supports this.

Following that, maybe a good starting point is to look at how some of the liveCD distro's are built - Knoppix is an example. You do have the advantage that the boot device is writable, but you have similar space constraints, and you can also tailor it to your hardware.

In theory - USB Drives can be formatted with different partition FS types, although I cannot pretend I knew enough about creating bootable USB Partitions without some good googling, and I seem to recall that you will probably be formatting it with FAT. Cursory attempts turned up the following:

http://rz-obrian.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de/knoppix-usb/ - Boot KNOPPIX from an USB Memory Stick
http://www.simonf.com/usb/ - Booting Linux off of a USB drive.

Danny