the compaq presario 2200 with max 80mb ram and optional subwoofer installed. i replaced the origional faulty CD drive with a black DVD drive. its running windows 95. supposedly only about 300 of these were sold in the US (according to wikipedia). i do like the built in speakers and form factor but its no wonder these things didn’t sell well since there are virtually no upgrade paths to take with it. even updating from windows 95 to 98 causes the system to go crazy and display gibberish.
Pretty standard ports on the rear. modem jack(s), headphone and microphone jack. joystick/midi port, VGA port. two PS/2 ports for mouse and keyboard. printer and serial port. The spot between the VGA port and the PS/2 ports was supposedly going to be for a USB port but that never materialized.
1) speaker/subwoofer
2) 56k modem
3) cryix 6×86 180mhz media cpu (not upgradeable)
4) dvd drive and under it is the HDD
5) 3.5 floppy disk drive
6) power supply
7) 80MB ram (80mb max)
basicly the only thing upgradable on this PC is the modem which can be upgraded to a 56K modem. no ethernet though and no ability to add any sound or video cards.
to replace the cd drive or hard drive you need to unscrew a screw to the left and right of the where the hard drive is located and disconnect the speakers, floppy and the hdd and cd drive then the entire computer splits apart into 2 pieces
here’s an example of what happens if you simply attempt to upgrade the OS to windows 98, oh did i mention it beeps like crazy the entire time. the most common way around this issue is to open the PC and remove the hard drive. install the hard drive into another NON presario 2200 pc and then install windows 98. remove the hard drive and then reinstall it into the 2200 and voila! but really, should that kind of thing be necessary. Now I believe you can upgrade to other later OS’s such as XP or ME but I suppose if you had this computer at the time that didn’t help. I’m guessing those later OS’s would also run painfully slow on this computer.
also apparently some clever (or lucky) people discovered that if you press some strange random keys as the gibberish is displayed you can get to a menu. choose the second from the bottom option and installation should start…i suppose that makes it somewhat better. if you manage to get windows 98se on this computer congratulations!
bottom line: should you have this computer, NO. unless you collect computers and you can snag it for free or a very low price your money can be spent on better more useful things. despite its rarity it’s not a prized piece to have. On a practical level it’s even worse and doesn’t even make a half decent windows 9x machine. For early windows OS’s you MUCH better off with almost any other machine. Even though the built in speakers are kinda nice just don’t bother.
ancientelectronics 
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I think I once had the laptop version of this machine. Except mine was made in 99 and had Windows 98. It was slower than than molasses in winter, was plagued with hardware problems and had no way to upgrade it. It had one USB port that prevented me from getting any other USB accessories because I had the ethernet plugged into there. It was the computer that drove me to Mac. I replaced it with a Performa 6200CD (from 1996 and considered by many to be the worst computer Apple made). Despite the Performa being a POS, it ran circles around the Prersario.
beleive it or not the laptop version was supperior. at least it let you upgrade to win98 without removing the HDD to anouther PC to do it. i really do like those built in speakers though.
The speakers were awesome. I remember rocking Napster mp3’s on Winamp back in the day on my presario laptop, that is until the 1GB hdd got full. Speaking of the hard drive, that was the biggest hardware issue with my machine. There was no way for the ribbon cable to stay locked into the drive. So if you moved your laptop (like a student taking it frequently to the library to escape his drunken roommate watching wrestling) the drive would come disconnected and give a OS Not Found message. Sometimes shaking it got the drive to come back online, but most likely it was cracking open the case and reconnecting the cable. By my senior year the cable was attached to the HDD via duct tape.
I really like the page! 🙂 Very informative….. Wished you would have documented your Nintendo mod you just did.. it turned out good… 🙂
i have a 2200 with 98 second edition on it its not a bad little machine mostly use it to play old games like ski free and jezzball
I got one of these computer, I don’t use it but I do have one.
I had one of these back in ’97/’98. Cost around £1500!
I’ve been looking everywhere online to try and get hold of another one as I stupidly sold mine a few years back for £20!
This PC was second to none when it came to DOS/2D Win95 games – those speakers were godly.
They’ve become pretty hard to find. Sales were supposedly pretty bad so its unsure how many of these are still out there.
did you consider replace the Motherboard with a mini atx form board? I think it could work
This (unfortunately) was my first IBM PC compat. Couldn’t run Hasbro’s version of Star Wars Monopoly, Road Rash was buggy at times, but it played Duke Nukem 3D great. I’m surprised someone has actually taken pics of this piece of history, it was hard to find an image of it to show to my friends. I did have some fun memories with the machine, it was the PC that started my programming and game modding (again Duke 3D).
The next PC was just as bad, a P3 Gateway running WinME.