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.
There were no girls on fidonet as best as I recall.
I thought this was me that posted this and forgot I posted it. I did this exact thing with same equipment back in college.
My reasoning was slightly different. I did do it just for fun but also I wanted to run multiple computers and servers and the university was pretty strict on the one computer per connection rule.