If you want cheap, don't bid on any listings that end on a Sunday. However, Sunday night on craigslist or other classifieds can be quite profitable, ppl be listing stuff, u be snapping it up.

NFS2:
https://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri/re … rground-2/10225

Indiana Jones:
https://www.gog.com/game/indiana_jones_and_th … ate_of_atlantis

Both look like they can run on a P3 @1GHz on Windows XP. So that may be a good starting point.

And I'm sure Wolf3d wll work in XP with some tweaks.

So maybe you need to aim for a Win XP machine. Something like a FUJITSU SIEMENS ESPRIMO with Windows XP would work.

andrewreader wrote:

NFS2:
https://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri/re … rground-2/10225

that's not the game I'm talking about.

andrewreader wrote:

Indiana Jones:
https://www.gog.com/game/indiana_jones_and_th … ate_of_atlantis

Both look like they can run on a P3 @1GHz on Windows XP. So that may be a good starting point.

I'd rather have the floppies for it, or atleast floppy images so it can be used on a dos PC

Rhuwyn wrote:

retrogamerguy1997 wrote:

On ebay, the prices for each of the components are ridiculously high. Also, I haven't been able to find any cheap socket 7 systems on ebay.

Just to further add onto my last comment.You might quantify what you version of cheap means.

Well, was going by the number you gave $100-$200. With the prices on ebay being high, it would be literally impossible to build a system for under $200. As for full systems, they go for $400.

Rhuwyn wrote:

I know some people who have gone years without spending very much money, but they spent a lot of time looking for free for cheap hardware. For others having the convenience of just paying a reasonable price for hardware to have it shipped to their doorstep is worth saving the time of having to search for a deal. You absolutely put together a socket 7 for completely free if you are willing to be patient and look for parts locally.

Thing is though, I'm not very patient

Rhuwyn wrote:

What you say about ebay is often true but what you'll find is generally the overpriced items generally sit around for a long time unsold. Items that are priced competitively tend to go fast, or you have to be patient for an auction style listing to complete. Once i found a pair of Super Socket 7 ALI motherboard both with CPUS and RAM in them which was misclassified under the wrong catagory and it turned out to be local to me so I arranged local pickup. Only ended up being 20 dollars for that auction. While something like that is kinda rare it's generally not hard to find an ATX super socket 7 motherboard for 30-50 dollars regularly. Outside of that it depends on what kind of parts your wanting.

sadly, there don't seem to be many options for less than $50. even then, they have an expensive shipping cost.

I get most of my stuff from a smaller recycler in St. Catharines, I often get parts for scrap value or near enough to it, especially on older parts. That said, I'm still at the mercy of what gets dropped off and generally can't test what I get, at least not beyond "does it power on"

LHN91 wrote:

I get most of my stuff from a smaller recycler in St. Catharines,

Howdy neighbour, I'm in the Niagara area too.

BitWrangler wrote:

Yes countries where they had a perceived longer useful life, either due to not being so materialistic or due to super high import tax and shipping on new tech, the used prices probably lag US/Can by 5 years or so, so they are in the dip.

All the campaigns to be green and "recycle e-waste" haven't helped up here. Which is not so green as re-using things, yet ppl will get a huge feeling of smug righteous satisfaction dumping their old systems in the "e-waste" bin rather than selling it for $20.

You guys are so lucky to live in a place with full of recycle centers and thrift stores, in my place you can rarely find these things and all you have to do is to buy on ebay and forums and accept the high shipping cost. About half of the money I spent on retro hardware is on shipping cost! And you mentioned the word materialistic, which is exactly what is happening here (and will always do), most people are only care about money and being materialistic. There is a small local mall which is full of stores to sell second hand computer hardware here but what you will find is brutally overpriced items and any thing that is beyond 15 years won't appear, you won't be able to find any socket 7 motherboard there and could rarely find a socket 370 motherboard.

Rhuwyn wrote:

I'm in Missouri in the US. I've never had issues finding Socket 7 hardware, but it depends what your definition of cheap is. If you buy all the parts separately on ebay you should be able to get away $100-$200 dollar range for the whole system. If you buy a system to start with and tweak it from there you will save money because you can almost always buy a full system for cheaper then the sum of it's parts. I've got 4 Socket 7 ATX boards and 5 or 6 AT socket 7 boards and I paid very little for any of them.

Like $10 for one socket 7 board?
I'm curious.

The systems you see for 300+ belong on the "Insanely overpriced thread" while the 150-250 dollar bracket, is a little more reasonable depending on the specific parts, but far from a bargain. Which most of the machines that are sitting there on ebay ready to buy fall into the insanely overpriced or a it's ok if you absolutely have to have it kind of catagory. You can get deals on ebay, but you have to be patient or lucky. No way around it. Outside of that call recycling centers where you live and ask if you can come buy and look at what they have. Most of them will either let you root around and take what you want, OR they will offer to let you take it for a small fee. There are some recyclers wow don't bother, but if you call around enough you hould find something.

BitWrangler wrote:

LHN91 wrote:

I get most of my stuff from a smaller recycler in St. Catharines,

Howdy neighbour, I'm in the Niagara area too.

Small world eh?

Technically I'm over on the edge of Haldimand County, but I'm on the Niagara edge and so I come out that way semi-regularly.

From november last year up to now, so far I've found for cheap :
1 XT pc with 2 other xt mobo
1 286 AT with its ega screen
A dozen of working socket 5/7 mobo and 2 p1 systems
2 slot 1 systems and 2 slot 1 mobos
A working 486 DX4 system (now upgraded to a 5x86) and a DX33 system, and 2 dead 486 systems
2 386SX25
A ton of 3Dfx cards
A ton of sound cards (including a boxed AWE64, a GUS and several sound blasters)
A ton of 5"1/4 disks and 3.5" hdds
A high end crt from 1997 that's extremely sharp.

And there are still many things missing to that list ...

For all of this, I've roughly paid from 300 to 400€.
And like I said, that's what I bought during a full year. To me, that was really worth it to wait more and get locally things I couldn't have bought normally on ebay because that would have been too expensive for me.

And the price I paid would become 0 quickly if I sold them on ebay, but I'm not going to do that

Deksor wrote:

A ton of 3Dfx cards
A ton of sound cards (including a boxed AWE64, a GUS and several sound blasters)
A ton of 5"1/4 disks and 3.5" hdds

I doubt it, the metals recycling value is over $1000 a ton. 😁

Okay, every single last one of my "Finding PC crap cheap" secrets... use responsibly...

Join all local facebook for sale groups, search facebook marketplace regularly, check listings on letgo.com and offerup.com regularly, sign up for all the local freecycle groups on yahoo groups, friday night, check gsalr.com for garage sales in your local area, use search function to see if anyone mentions "computer" etc in their listing, so even if you don't have time to do a lot of garage sales you can hit the one or two most likely to have what you want. Go to fleamarkets. Dress up as an ewaste recycling dumpster and hide in the corner of a busy parking lot.... okay maybe I was lying about the last one, maybe.