This is a nice interesting project, have not done this kind of stuff in a very long time so I am enjoying it. I downloaded and burned IPCop version 1.3.0 to CD. Thanks for the HDD suggestion, I connected the 1.6gig drive to the boot IDE cable so MS-XP drive was safe.
First try, loaded cd and booted IPCop 1.3, many messages going by on the screen relative to PCI slots and i/o hardware stuff. I wish they could be saved or printed to review. The process wanted a return from my keyboard but I still had the MS wireless mouse and keyboard installed so I removed them. Installed a keyboard and made another try. This time I got to the point where it was going to format the drive(/dev/hda) and then LILO gave me a message! Your hard disk is to small, it should be at least 125mb+2*ram size. My system has 1gig of ram so the 1.6gig drive is not large enough to load the IPCop system. This is just a learning process and I will wait until a larger drive is purchased. As I said this is a project to learn from and to enjoy, I am in no hurry!