Did something similar-ish, except using an old 386 motherboard packed to the gills with 30-pin SIMMs. Booted off 3.5" floppy into initramfs. Init was a busybo

Did something similar-ish, except using an old 386 motherboard packed to the gills with 30-pin SIMMs. Booted off 3.5" floppy into initramfs. Init was a busybox shell script (@/linuxrc IIRC) to setup ip masquerading as it was known then, then it'd deliberately panic by exiting init while the kernel kept running the network stack with no userspace. That little pile of PC debris eventually became a dialup POP for a local girl I met on IRC who was at constant war with her older brother over their shared AOL account, despite having their own computers w/phone lines. Fun times, those teen-aged years. Linux was such a game changer back then, enabling kids to deploy their own ISP if they just read the HOWTOs and collected enough computer trash.