Your budget is quite tight indeed.  The sound card is irrelevant for
building an E-mail machine.   Sound is nice, but not essential to
any applications you will run on this machine.

The CD Rom is another concern.   Nearly all software today comes on
CD Rom...  but, with that said and remembering the system speed, you
may get by without it, as long as the only software loaded is older stuff
that comes on floppy disks.

You may encounter issues with a hard drive over 524mgs on this
system if the bios will not support it.  That may force you to use a
hard disk management software package like Disk Manager.

Hope this helps...
   Bob


At 01:29 PM 1/5/99 , you wrote:
>Hi All,
>   I'm new to the list so please forgive me if I'm off-topic here. I'm
>getting ready to make my first try at building  a computer and want to
>get some ideas concerning the way to go.
>   The purpose of the computer is to give to my sister, who lives 1200
>miles away, so that my mother and her could send messages/letters via
>email. And I need to do it on a budget of $50 to $60.
>   At present, I have the following components on hand: 486 33 mhz
>motherboard & chipset, vga monitor, vga video card, dual controller,
>mid-tower case, half a dozen hard drives in sizes from 35mb to 250mb. I
>have a cousin who is going to donate a larger hard drive (550mb to
>850mb). I know that a modem (14.4 minimum), keyboard, floppy drive, and
>mouse are vital, but would like to hear pros & cons about a sound card,
>cd-rom, etc.
>   I found a place where I can get the keyboard, mouse, and floppy drive
>for $30-$35 new. I don't really think I'll be able to stay within my
>budget, but advice about non-essential components would be greatly
>appreciated. TIA
>    Yours,
>    Mike Yates

                         PCBUILD's List Owner's:
                      Bob Wright<[log in to unmask]>
                        Drew Dunn<[log in to unmask]>