Off a used computer or aquire it on the Internet. 

*https://winworldpc.com/product/windows-98*

JAWESOME!

Time to get muh welding goggles on. It's arcade PC building time!

What are you building? 

Right now? Just brewing a concept.

End goal? A janky machine capable of playing really really old games. DOS-era.

Yes, I know I can just fire up a VM and do that, but it doesn't feel the same

I just bought an ATi x1950 Pro 512MB, because I want to see what a to on the range PC from 2006 was like. I understand running stuff on out sated hardware. 

*outdated hardware. 

Right now I'd have a mobo, cpu and probably a PSU. Still need to find some memory and a gpu

Socket 5/7/Super 7 or newer? 

Socket A.

mobo is an Asus A7N8X and CPU is a Sempron 2800+

I was working on a similar computer, 320MB ram, win 98, Pentium 3 1.0GHz and a S3 Savage4. I accidentally broke the CPU mounting point on my motherboard. 

It's the only board I have left that is in some working condition. Not too keen on spending a lot of money on that project, but seeing the prices on DDR-400 and AGP GPUs, I'm going to cut corners everywhere I can

Heh. Mine has 2 out of 3 DIMMS fried beyond repair, on-board LAN has been dead since 2008, unsure about most of the PCI slots (I know at least one works, since that rig was retired last winter and it had a working NIC on it).

AGP GPUs are anywhere from $3 to $50, obviously going to go for something around 128 or 256 mb.

DDR-400 is hella expensive for some reason, so I might end up memtesting my box-o-ram until I find a working, usable DIMM. 256mb would be my best bet (since I only have 256mb ones).

I SHOULD still have an old PSU somewhere in storage, alongside a CD/DVD drive, probably going to throw in an FDD as well, for shits and giggles.

And I need to find a really cheap case, $5 ballpark.

So it isn't a 1990's PC but it will have DOS installed on it?

DDR1 isn't that expensive, but still the used market for ram is crap in general.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/301723514529/

I tried to salvage a P2 and a P3 but they were beyond repair. Even after I replaced most (if not all) the caps on the mobo it still had significant issues and stability problems.

I'm going to buy locally, since I don't really want to wait a month for shipping.

I've got a few scouts looking out for 486 machines, but so far nothing usable.

Wait for hard rubbish collection, you find a pile of computers that you can get parts from.

Yeah, we don't get that around here. Most people literally throw away old electronics in the dumpster and the people at the collection center refuse to sell or give stuff. If I'm lucky enough I might find them on local forums/auction sites (gumtree/craigslist style ones), but the asking price is far too high for what the electronics are actually worth.

A working P3 goes for like $150, and that's before shipping (which doesn't add much to the price, but you get the idea) and I really want to stick to local, since I can test the components for faults

That is a huge ripoff. Most people thow out their old electronics anyway (or take them to the tip since it has free Ewaste disposal) but if you are spending money to remove other rubbish, they chuck their HP on there too.

Well, there still are quite a lot of people that use old PCs (have seen people still running XP or even 2000) so the old component market is still very much alive and kicking, hence the ridiculous prices

Anything less than a Prescott Pentium 4 is useless for even basic computing.

On a side note, if I was to ship my old P4 Northwood 2.4C based computers to your country, how much would they sell for?

about $100 to $175, depending on the config, but with shipping it wouldn't amount to much more than you'd probably get there

Only $100 AUD for a computer to be shipped to Europe (~$72USD), the ETA would be 2 to 3 months.

Kek.

So basically you'd be paying someone to take the machines off of you. Gumtree it is

How is your used market so shit that I could ship a computer that is worth nothing in Australia to Europe and I'd still get a profit? Do people actually buy those computer or do they stay on gumtree for years?

People actually buy that junk.

I've sold FB-DIMMs before, and those are useless even to me <_<

Not to mention the number of 10/100 4/8/16 port switches I've listed and sold.

Hell, even CRT monitors get sold fairly fast, yet the server I'm looking to buy for $70 has been listed for at least 8 months with nobody buying it (IBM dual opteron, 8 gigs of registered DDR and 2x72gb drives)

If the server is rack mounted, Buy an ikea LACK side table and you that as your rack.