DNAr was working on a headless *nix distribution system that required nothing but a floppy drive and a network connection for each node. His website:
http://dnaresearch.com.au/gahnix.html
Information on how to boot up diskless/headless systems via just a NIC is here:
http://etherboot.sourceforge.net/
Customizable ROM images to burn onto EPROM (for the NICs) can be found here:
http://rom-o-matic.net/