Getting started - Motherboard, CPU and RAM
Up until around 2015, getting started in this "hobby" was fairly easy. It was somewhat common to find the old hardware in dumpster rooms as people threw them out, because they didn't have any value.
But value is determined by supply and demand. As time went on, more people took up retro computing, increasing the demand - and more and more of the old hardware died, decreasing the supply. The supply is, of course, ever decreasing, giving the surviving, working hardware more and more value, especially CRT monitors.
Getting a hold of the most basics for a computer is fairly easy, as you will not have to search long online to find a decent motherboard with CPU and RAM. The case seems to be a different story, as these seem to be in short supply. In "the good old days", you usually didn't buy a new computer, you upgraded what you had. This included motherboards - you bought a new motherboard and swapped it out in the same case you always had! This was so common, that most hardware stores sold about six motherboards for every case they sold, according to a salesman I once spoke to...
But when is it old enough to be retro?
Good question - and probably one not everybody can agree on. To me, a computer is retro if it still has ISA-slots on the motherboard. Others believe that it is anything more than ten years old, which, admittedly, is an eternity in the computing world. Still others will say that it is anything with an AT power connector - ATX is too new to be retro.
Probably the best definition lies somewhere in between: To YOU, retro is what you grew up with. It is what you remember using as a child, in your teen years and possibly up through your twenties.
Here, I'll stick to my personal definition - a PC with specs common to somewhere in the late 1990'es, meaning a motherboard with ISA slots, a fairly decent 32-bit CPU and at least 128 MB of RAM, if you want to run Windows 98. If you just want to run pure DOS, you can get away with very little, but I would recommend at least 16 MB. Remember that DOS can "only" address 64 MB of RAM, so this is what is usable in DOS, no matter how much more you put in.
If you plan on running Windows 95, it will have problems booting with more than 480 MB RAM. Windows 98 claims to support up to 2 GB RAM, but has a bug in the memory management causing all kinds of errors and glitches if you have more than 512 MB. Apparantly this bug was never fixed.
I got my present one from "Den Blå Avis", which back in the day was an actual "news"paper, published on mondays and thursdays (as I recall). If you wanted to sell something, you bought it, cut out one of the cuopons, filled it in and mailed it - it was then printed in the next edition of the paper. Having your ad in the paper was free, unless you were a business or wanted something special that made your ad stand out visually...
Anyway, as I said, I bought mine there from a seller fairly close to where I live. You may be tempted to have it shipped to you, but in my experience, what you get is usually junk! Once upon a time, the mail services actually took pride in their work - today, it seems that their primary concern is to see how badly they can break anything anyone is stupid enough to ship. So if at all possible, go pick it up yourself! This will most likely also give you a chance to see the thing running before paying.
Mine came equipped with an Iwill BD100 Plus motherboard with the Intel 440BX chipset, an AGP slot, two ISA slots, five PCI slots and two USB ports, which, as we will get to, can be useful, even in pure DOS. This board was released sometime in the late 1990'ies.
The CPU is a Pentium II 233 MHz Slot 1, which I regret a bit today. Not the CPU itself, but that it is Slot 1 with active cooling. The small 50 mm fan that is on there seems to be pretty tricky to replace, and as it is with such fans, the bearings tend to wear over time, causing it to make unpleasant noises...
Other than that, it came with 512 MB RAM (it was built for Windows 98) and a 3½" floppy drive, all assembled in a pretty decent case. I honestly can not remember what type of video or sound card was in it, as I never intended on keeping these.
So, this is the base computer. Your mileage may vary if you are going for something older, like a 486 - the DX2 66MHz seem to be extremely popular (and therefore expensive) - or something a bit later in the Windows XP-era...
A word of caution
What ever you buy, do yourself a favor and look inside of the case (or demand to see photos) at the BIOS battery! If the board has been stored a long time with the battery in it, it will most likely have leaked and corroded the surrounding areas of the motherboard.
Also, beware of the capacitor plague, especially if you are going for the XP-era. Make sure you inspect the board closely, unless the seller has replaced the capacitors on the board. This also goes for the power supply, although this can be a bit more tricky to check.
