While browsing a 2nd hand store locally, I stumbled over this Gateway 2000 computer for 10 dollars. Inside looked terrible, full of dust and lowend components. But I thought, for 10 dollars the case is worth at least that becasue its beige?

It was a unloved I815 with a 800mhz p3, a Riva TNT2 with a SBlive and 256 MB ram. The hard drive was shot, the power supply was about to die, but It worked.

Later my impression of the whole thing was not high, as soon as I realized that Id need to dremel the hole bigger on the rear of the case, and drill holes through the back to fit a standard power supply.

Still I felt like It should be saved, because some how this piece of shit survived the dumpster all these years, and made it to my hands. Yet It shouldn't be a amazing rig, I should accept it for what it is, and make it better yet keep it lowend, as this would of been a budget computer back then.

I upgraded the video card to a Geforce 4 440MX 8X
I added a 8mb Voodoo 2 card that will never find a home anywhere.
Decided to keep the SB Live and used the Audigy VXDs with it , I mean since it has no ISA slots who cares.
I changed the NIC it had to a 3com that I pulled out of my mountain of 3com cards.
I was able to salvage to floppy drive, and I ended up swapping the CD/DVD rom in it for a DVD burner I had laying around becasue why not.
Kept the 256 MB ram. I feel like its enough.
Replaced the HDD with a lowend 20gb Seagate ATA 5

Other than heavy case modification to fit a newer power supply all I did was flash the gateway bios to the last version of the Intel official bios for this OEM board.

Total cost still 10 Dollars, not counting junk parts I hoarded and upgraded it with.