You should be able to buy a complete slot1/socket370 system for less than $100. (here in the Netherlands anyway).

If you don't want to buy a complete system but parts then you'd have to look locally; computer-stores that also sell old stuff and fleamarkets or some such. Otherwise, shipping costs will probably be outrageous compared to part prices.

A Pentium machine would be my first choice. Slot 1 not so much.

Check out my most recent video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzxnB2CD6aw

It explains a lot about what choices there are and what time periods you can cover.

I was just thinking though, what would specifically be some good cpu/motherboard/gpu/sound card combinations optimized for games from these eras?

I know that for the early-mid '90s, a 486DX2-66 with an SB16 and something like an early SVGA card is a classic combination, though from what I understand systems like this have gotten a lot more expensive because peopel have started to realize just how awesome they are for gaming. 🤣

*cough* That disregarded thing called wiki... 😉

Well, an example of a Slot1 system from around 1998;

Abit BH6
Celeron 300A @ 450MHz.
Matrox G200 + Voodoo 2 12MiB

Don't know about soundcards though, not my area of expertise.

Any cpu/mainboard combo with a P100-233 non-MMX or MMX doesn't matter too much. K6, K6-2 is also fine. My preference are the late Super Socket 7 ATX machines 😀

For the early DOS era consider something like a Tandy 1000... still pretty common, relatively inexpensive, no need to build from scratch, and some of the later models can take a VGA and whatnot.

The sound card choice is really a tough topic, especially for such a wide time range. I'll try to explain what I know and others will perhaps correct me if I'm wrong somewhere.

In the early era of DOS gaming there were these sound/music options:

- PC Speaker (mostly bleeps and tweets, but some games were squeezing PCM out of it - check Doom2D for example)
- Covox and relatives like Disney Sound Source (only suitable for PCM sound)
- Creative Music System (Game Blaster card, but also available as add-on chips for Sound Blaster 1.0, 1.5, 2.0 and ATI Stereo F/X (Stereo F/X CD, VGA Stereo F/X))
- OPL2-based cards (Adlib, Sound Blaster 1.0, 1.5, 2.0; multiple clones of Adlib and Sound Blaster)
- some external and internal music synthesizers that were supported by a narrow range of games (some Casio external synths, Yamaha FB-01, IBM Music Feature card...)
- widely supported Roland MT-32 (and its relatives CM-32L, CM-64, CM-500 and LAPC-I)

For PCM sound, SB and its compatibles or Covox/DSS must be used.

All this stuff (except for PC Speaker) costs a lot because of its extinction. If you plan to spend $100 on a whole PC, forget about this era of sound. You might get a cheap soundcard of later period though, that will be pretty compatible with early DOS era standards.

As sound producing techniques evolved, the next options appeared in the first half of 90's:

- Yamaha OPL3-based solutions, of which Sound Blaster Pro 2 and Sound Blaster 16 are the most known;
- a multitude General MIDI-compatible wavetable cards, daughterboards and external devices (of which Roland SC-55 and Yamaha MU-10 are perhaps the most known ones).
- General MIDI-incompatible wavetable cards, like Sound Blaster AWE32/AWE64 or Gravis Ultrasound.

As for PCM, this period demands having a Sound Blaster 16 or later (32/64). There were other cards that supported 16-bit PCM output (among them Gravis Ultrasound, Roland RAP-10, Microsoft WSS, MediaVision ProAudioSpectrum 16), but they were supported by a minority of games.

Most of these are expensive either. But it is possible to find a cheap Sound Blaster 16 or even an AWE32. Also you could go for less known soundcards like Yamaha OPL3SAx series. This one has an OPL3 chip which is backwards compatible with an OPL2 (thus you get covered the earlier era pretty well), and is compatible with Sound Blaster Pro standard.

The other inexpensive but rare option: there is a family of Aztech cards that are SB compatible, and are capable of emulating Covox/DSS. You will find more information about it here at Vogons.

The other inexpensive but rare card is Orchid Soundwave 32, which has its own wavetable and has a not-so-bad MT-32 emulation.

In the later half of 90s MIDI game music slowly extincted from production, being displaced by CD Audio and pure compressed and uncompressed PCM, like WAV, MP3 and OGG. But sound cards competed with sound positioning techniques, of which EAX and A3D were widely supported by games. For the first, you need a SB Live!, Audigy or Audigy2 card, for the latest - an Aureal Vortex-based card, like notorious Diamond MX300. They shouldn't be expensive.

If you aren't going to investigate this theme any further and don't want to spend much money, I'd say get yourself:

- an early ISA non-PnP SB16 CT1740 for an early DOS era ($15)
- an ISA PnP AWE64 card for the late DOS era ($15)
- a PCI Audigy 2 ZS card for Windows era ($10)

For anyone on a budget, I'd recommend trying to source a complete PC locally from the classified ads, either 486 or Pentium. eBay is too expensive because all the retro freaks are on there, and shipping is a killer!

Buying locally also ups the chances that you'll get a nice complete system with CRT monitor, clicky keyboard etc.

eBay is great for hard-to-find stuff (SCC-1, CM-32L...), but you definitely pay a premium.

Yea a completed system is definitely the way to go if you are on a budget!

I dont think its unrealistic to pick up anything from an early pentium up to a pentium 4 system for nothing, or next to nothing, this stuff gets thrown out of all the time or has been stuck in a garage for 10 years, I'd check garage sales and local tips.

If you wanted an authentic dos machine and only wanted to build one computer its hard to go post a slot/socket 370 system in ATX format, first of all that gives you a cheap abundant case and power supplies, secondly isa slots for the classic sound cards and plenty of CPU grunt to run the later games in higher resolution.
SD-RAM and cpus are cheap.

The expensive part will be the sound card setup if you want general midi and/or MT-32, for a video card on the cheap I'd chuck in a Geforce 2 of some any description.