>   Please kindly advise me on what would be
> a stable and hardy configuration/combination with economy in mind - no
> major graphics/video/music capabilities required here.  I would like to buy
> all components new so I can get the accompanying documentation.

G'day Tom,

I've just been down that path, so I can appreciate that it can be something of
a puzzle.

My first thought was to buy the best possible mobo. as this is the heart of any
system, figuring to save money elsewhere. I also had an eye to a clearly
defined future upgrade path.
This then ruled out a Pentium system because Intel seem to change their Slot /
Socket configuration with each new version of their CPU. The only other real
choice is AMD who use Socket A for Athlon, Duron and T'bird, although with a
caution on the chipset required.
After some research I decided to buy an ASUS  A7V 133a. (note the 'a'
designation)
As it turned out, it seems to be a very popular choice with home-builds for its
reliability and quality, - although it's probably one of the most expensive,
relatively speaking.

The decision about which CPU was a no-brainer ; for our purposes, the Duron 800
is/was about equal to its' Pentium 3 counterpart, at about half the price !
A point to keep in mind is, - which chipset is installed on the motherboard ?
As I understand it, the plain old VIA KT133 runs both Duron and Athlon, - the
133a supports a future upgrade to Thunderbird.(That's my admittedly amateur
understanding)
Another point is that good cooling is essential for such a system, cheap fans
are not a good place to save money, high quality ball-bearing fan/s and good
heatsink compound may well repay the investment.
This leads to something else ; the power supply and something to stuff it all
in.......
While the ATX case is virtually the standard, I made the mistake of buying an
'el cheapo' case, only to find that it had a minimal amount of mounting holes
for the mobo. Never mind, not the end of the world, but in hindsight I should
have spent another few bucks.
More important is the rating and quality of the power supply, 300W is the
recommended minimum. The Asus mobo.has provision for a P/S thermal monitor, -
wether or not this is provided in any power supply might be an indicator of
build quality, a difficult factor to determine until it actually fails.

Another buy was a Gigabyte GeForce 2MX video card, - possibly a bit of overkill
for my needs, but the price was right and I do anticipate a move into more
graphics intensive apps. in my other hobby of genealogy. (And I must admit that
the big kid inside me enjoys playing flight sims.)
Incidentally, the Asus mobo. has built-in audio which should be adequate for me
at first, although a SoundBlaster card is on my future,but not essential,
shopping list.

I hope to soon find the time to power-up this bare-bones system, which
theoretically should get me into DOS. Then I'll mount the three drives which
the mobo. should auto-detect ; then installation of W98SE (plug and play)
should find the modem, printer and scanner as I add them.

That's the theory anyway, the reality is probably going to be different !

Oh! and as a final thought, - buy quality name-brand RAM, because most of the
cheap stuff is exactly that.  A cheap 128 is likely to be a failed 256, etc.
etc.

PS: I started by replying privately, but then I realised that we aren't the
only virgin PC builders in the world, so I'll re-copy this to the List so that
others who may be interested can see and perhaps correct my mistakes, or offer
better ideas.

Kevin,
Auckland,
New Zealand.

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