OH! And do you know what exactly went bad on Matilda? Given that it is unlikely that several major components of the PC went down, it is possible that much of it is still salvagable. Would some components help until a complete system is feasible?

We recently built a PC for my honey to learn Linux on. We bought the case, power supply, motherboard, CPU (one GHz duron), and 256 megs of RAM for under $250.00 (more RAM can be obtained for not too much more money). All we had to supply from our own spare parts was the CD drive, hard drive, floppy, and misc. nick nacks (like keyboard, mouse, cables, etc.). Even if you want a 120 Gb hard drive and need to get it from a retail place like BestBuy, you can get that for $250.00 as well (which is available cheaper elsewhere). $800.00 to $900.00 may not be what is necessary to get you where you want to be.