Gateways, especially in the 486 and Pentium days, were awesome. I just paid too much (though still far, far less than it originally cost) for a Pentium 133 full size tower that is something I would have upgraded to at the time if I could have afforded it. That gargantuan tower has got to be my favorite design ever and this one was in mint condition...and miraculously survived shipping. Basically the same design as the 486 tower shown in this post.
Pentiums don't seem that old, and honestly they were still usable (albeit not necessarily a pleasant experience) until they finally pulled the plug on Windows XP...at least if you had a higher end one and could cram enough RAM into it. I recently came across a Compaq Presario that had a K6-200MMX in it. Problem is that it had 16MB soldered on and one memory slot and could have a max of only 48MB of RAM. That thing was practically obsolete when it came out because of that limitation.
I got a zip drive for my 486 not too long after they came out. I splurged for the SCSI version. At the time, ~$20 a disk for 100MB was a great deal. I still have it and a few years ago I pulled it out and hooked it up to copy all the old data I had on ZIP disks. It still worked then anyway.