Last year my aunt let me add her original Tangerine iBook G3 clamshell to my collection of old Macs1.



It came with an AirPort card—a $99 add-on Apple made that ushered in the Wi-Fi era. The iBook G3 was the first consumer laptop with built-in Wi-Fi antennas, and by far the cheapest way to get a computer onto an 802.11 wireless network.

Jeff Geerling is a software developer, author, and open-source contributor known for his expertise in infrastructure automation and Drupal development. Readers can learn about DevOps practices, Ansible automation, and web development with Drupal. With blog posts, tutorials, and open-source projects, Jeff Geerling shares  insights and best practices for building and managing web infrastructure.

Jeff Geerling

A hands-on project guide for building a local dial-up ISP using a Raspberry Pi, a USB 56K modem, and a telephone line simulator. The setup uses mgetty and PPP on Debian Linux to handle modem calls and authenticate connections. An Ansible playbook automates the configuration. The project goes further by connecting a vintage 1999 Apple iBook G3 wirelessly via an original AirPort Base Station, achieving 33.6 kbps dial-up over 802.11b Wi-Fi. Macproxy Classic is used to make modern websites accessible on old browsers. The author reflects on how the project deepened understanding of modem protocols, QAM, and modern networking concepts like VPNs.

Build your own Dial-up ISP with a Raspberry Pi