rather, back then you didn't need the same kernel to run on a wide
variety of hardware, with all the possible different combinations of
peripherals, requiring all sorts of different drivers.
I think that's the only real reason why initramfs came to existence:
allowing a selection of kernel modules to be loaded at init time,
depending on the hardware at disposal on that machine. Then things went
south, and more recent initramfs have everything and the kitchen sink.
But that's another story.
Yea, it was an effort to move mounting of root out of the kernel. The earliest
scripts just mounted the right disk and moved on, and didn't load any new
drivers: they just had the logic to pick the desired root. But at the same time,
there were a lot of people that were running on 4MB and 8MB systems that
noticed they could put all the router software in the initramfs and never pivot
to something else and they could have quite the product with that. And those
were the first few bricks that paved the road to hell :)
Warner