Well, let’s hear those specs!

You can find dos computers on eBay, Facebook Marketplace, Kijiji, Craigslist etc…

Reveal?

Look at recycle centers.

Harry Potter wrote on 2023-04-13, 15:02:

.... I have specific specs in mind and am willing to reveal them here. .........

🤣

I want a laptop or preferably a desktop with a 486DX4 or Pentium processor, 16 or 32MB RAM, 350-500MB hard drive, SVGA graphics card and monitor, a sound card of at least SB16 or compatible, a floppy, a CD-ROM at least 8x and DOS 6.2 or better and Win3.1 installed. My mother subscribes to Craigslist. Maybe I'll ask her to look for it for me. I tried eBay. I found a lot of stuff, but they were either out of my specs range or sold as is or for parts. 🙁

Most retro/vintage equipment is going to be sold "as-is" on eBay.

That is the only way for sellers to insure that scummy "buyers" are not able to change their mind and claim a fault in the hardware, making the seller do a full refund and have to eat the shipping.

For the drive, I would drop that requirement and use either a PCI SATA controller (SATA 1) or an IDE to SATA adapter and a SATA SSD. If you really want that size of drive, look for a DOM (Disk On Module).

On another note, there is tons of hardware with those specs on eBay.

Well...I recently got a Win98SE minitower for free. Its specs were way beyond what I wanted, but it was free. 😀 It has a hard drive that's >150GB, but, with the proper software, I can create a very small partition at the beginning of the hard drive after resizing the current partition and moving it out of the way. I am familiar with FDISK and FORMAT but don't want to kill the current partition, as it has stuff on it.

This era is getting harder to find but still come up from time to time. For example I scored a Pentium last year and 486 2 years ago both on freecycle so free. I wasn't really looking for new machines but that's an offer too good to refuse.

ebay gives the best results but costs the most. Local sites like Facebook, etc will often have different items listed as often people can't be bothered with shipping. (myself included)
Especially for a PC don't worry about it's specs too much. The case (as AT cases are hard to find) and motherboard are the important things. You can upgrade CPU's Hard drives, etc, etc for fairly cheap as well.

I used to have a DOS laptop that had no hard drive, but I was able to simulate one using a network, two Zip100 disks and two large RAM drives. I should've just istalled a hard drive I had for it. It also had a broken monitor, standard VGA graphics and no sound card. 🙁 It's missing. I don't know where it is. 🙁 That's why I'm asking for a new DOS computer.

Harry Potter wrote on 2023-04-13, 22:31:

I am familiar with FDISK and FORMAT but don't want to kill the current partition, as it has stuff on it.

Just use another HDD or flash card for DOS unless its spec is too new for DOS. If so, you can:

1. Ask around friends and relatives; sometimes they have retired old computers that can give you for free.
2. Look for local garage/yard sales or flea markets.
3. Visit used goods stores, recycling centers, or even bulk trash pickup sites in your neighborhood.
4. Finally, there's always auction sites like eBay and classified ad sites (where you might be able to get a better deal but with much less protection than auction sites).

Harry Potter wrote on 2023-04-13, 22:08:

I want a laptop or preferably a desktop with a 486DX4 or Pentium processor, 16 or 32MB RAM, 350-500MB hard drive, SVGA graphics card and monitor, a sound card of at least SB16 or compatible, a floppy, a CD-ROM at least 8x and DOS 6.2 or better and Win3.1 installed.

Start with a desktop, since you can more easily swap out parts if you have issues, and you will learn more.

Get one with a Socket 7 board. Pentium CPUs are plentiful, and ISA+PCI boards are easier to work with than plain ISA or ISA+VLB. If you get one with DIMM RAM slots instead or or in addition to SIMMs, you will have an easier time finding cheap RAM. They usually have integrated floppy and IDE controllers which will also make your life easier. S3 Trio64 video cards are the gold standard for DOS. Sound Blaster 16 ISA cards are easy to come by, as are the floppy and CD drives.

Sourcing the operating system is left as an exercise to the reader.

I used to have a DOS laptop at my mother's house, but it went missing. 🙁 I want it back badly, even though it had poor specs: the main good things about it were a 486DX4/75MHz processor and 28MB RAM. Other than those, it sucked. 🙁 I still liked using it, though. If my mother finds it and a hard drive I should've installed on it, I can use it again.