Small Scale Networking newbie

By a series of events during move out from college, i got my hands on a linux based box. It is a Cobalt RaQ 3, and I want to use it to catch the signal from my wireless router downstairs and connect my cluster computer to the internet. It has a PCI slot, so this is doable, but I cannot even get into the console to see whats going on. Apparently I have to SSH into it, but i do not know how to. Anybody care to lend advice?

I suggest Arch Linux (www.archlinux.org). It's easier to maintain and you don't have to compile stuff all the time.
Very lightweight and fast.