I've made a perfect Windows98se machine out of an old Toshiba 300 cdt laptop. Put the max amount of RAM in it (196 mb). It's a P-166, but all the old stuff runs great! These laptops you can get for about 50 euros or so on ebay and if you need a old-school gaming PC you've got it.
Hell, you really don't need a 233 to run '98, I've had the old Toshiba run Windows 2000 flawlessly... a bit slow, but still usable as an internet-typewriter
If you want to run DOS-games, you shouldn't opt for Linux off course. You can run DOSBox off course, but then you'd still be emulating and an old machine just won't do it.
PS. I've got nothig against Linux off course... actually I'm bootstrapping my Dell Latitude to run Gentoo as we speak!