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Some of the newer systems people are mentioning aren`t going to have win98 drivers available which could be problematic. I have a mini-ITX Pentium-M board with i855GM chipset and it would not boot win98 at all. I`m not sure why, may have been a BIOS issue, and this hardware is not even new (probably 6 years old or more).
I think an old Pentium-MMX laptop or a desktop system with a socket 7 motherboard and possibly an underclocked CPU would do the job just fine. Use a low-end video card, 2.5" HDD or CF card, and the monitor and printer will be the only things left to think about.
While it`s true that older parts use higher voltages and were manufactured with a larger process size, they also contain vastly fewer transistors on the die. In addition to that, die shrinks have yielded diminishing returns ever since the 90nm node because of leakage current. So if you don`t need all the features of the new stuff then older stuff isn`t out of the question.
The laptop I`m using right now has:
ULV Pentium M (1.1w idle, 5.5w tdp)
855PM chipset (1.8w tdp)
Mobility Radeon 7500 a.k.a. M7-CSP32 (1.6W idle, 5.3W tdp)
which is out of date but still looks pretty good compared to any atom/i945 combo
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