Retail SDR SDRAM prices from that time period.

"128MB DIMM: May 1997 $300. July 1998 $150. July 1999 $99. September 1999 Jiji earthquake happens. September-December 1999 $300. May 2000 $89.

Then overproduction combined with dot-com boom liquidations started flooding the market and Feb 2001 $59, by Aug 2001 _256MB_ module was $49. Feb 2002 256MB $34. Finally April 2003 hit the absolute bottom with $39 _512MB_ DIMMs"

Ram was expensive and unpredictable so no wonder eMachines didnt include that in the offer. By 2001 you could upgrade ram on the cheap yourself which many attempted https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/memory-for-an-e-machine...