Just posting research results....
I think this is done in vmlinuz at the initial boot loader.

During the boot, it starts with
1) Syslinux banner line flashes on top of screen momentarily
2) Boot graphic and prompt (inside boot.img) are presented
3) options selected or not then <cr>
4) vmlinuz.........
5) miniroot.gz.........
6) screen clears
7) 1 or more Tuxs apear at top of screen
(that was an '8' paren) Some welcome string:
knoppix = Welcome to (multicolored) KNOPPIX Live-CD
L.A.S = Now booting Local Area Security 0.4.1
9) Found xxxx memory

At Step #8 we are at the first (almost) executable line of the 'linuxrc" script. This script is the only executable thing in the miniroot.gz, inside the boot.img.

The next action for linuxrc is to 'mount /dev/proc /proc". This is where the commandline and cpu information are taken from. The number of processors is already known, the comptessed file system with the kernel are not even looped and mounted yet.

The tailend of vmlinuz must be what loaded that '/dev/proc' structure just before clearing the screen and putting up the Tux and starting the linuxrc after opening miniroot.gz.

Also, the knoppix kernel is labeled as 2.4.22-xfs, and the L.A.S kernel is 2.4.20-xfs. The options configuration for Knoppix does set the only occurance of "xxx-SMP = y".

BillS