Im his friend, and yes, my writing is bad
What he has now is a VERY old IBM, 266Mhz AMD, i think, and after he saw me building mine, he wanted a custom computer.
Now hes only 12, and his mum is a little strict when it comes to him buying stuff.
When i was croozin ebay, i thought i might put toghetr a sub £200 system, using used parts.
Now since its ebay, the parts are always changing, so ill just give an rough guide of what i think would suit his needs.
Intel P3 1Ghz
Mobo - Aopen seems to be quite a good P3 brand, but ASUS pwns, so ill look
for one of them
RAM- 256MB minimum, hopefully 512MB
Graphics - Either AGP 4x or a good PCI card, ive seen a nvidia NV18, 64MB, so that should handle half life OK (I had an ancient dell with integrated 4MB, and it played it, but was much better with 32MB deicated)
Case + PSU - I think a nice looking case with a PSU included. The PSU doesnt have to be superb, its not going to be O/Ced etc
HDD - Just an IDE, around 20GB should be plenty
Opticals- DVD & CD-RW drive
It came to around £125, but if he can save £200, then there lots of room for improvment.