Compaq Presario 7222

The Presario 7222. Click for more images!

It's very hard to find hard and fast information to give any form of historical detail about its place in the universe, but some conclusions can be drawn. In a 1996 article in BusinessWeek, it was reported that Compaq had opted to outsource production of components to a 'Taiwanese company' instead of expanding their own production facilities. That company was of course MiTAC, who exist to this day and own brands including TYAN and Synnex, who are a big player in channel distribution worldwide.

The design is fairly typical of Compaq machines of the era, with a custom board form factor utilizing a riser card. The board is built around the OPTi Viper chipset with an integrated 1MB S3 Trio64V+ and ESS1788 AudioDrive. The 7200 series board is a Socket 7 design and in its original 7222 form, shipped with a Pentium 100, 8MB RAM and was paired with a 1.2GB Seagate Medalist and a 4x Sony CDROM drive.

Specifications

Intel Pentium OverDrive MMX 200MHz

IDT 7MPV6124 256K async cache

64MB EDO RAM

4.2GB ATA hard disk (Windows)

6.0GB ATA hard disk (Storage)

ASUS 52x CDROM drive

MiTAC PL5600G mainboard (OPTi Viper-M chipset)

ASUS S3 Trio64V2/DX 2MB PCI graphics

Creative SoundBlaster AWE64, 8MB RAM

Diamond Monster 3Dfx Voodoo Graphics 4MB accelerator

3Com Etherlink III ISA ethernet adapter

Windows 95 OSR2.5

Unique features

A few things did make the Presario somewhat interesting at the time. In its as-delivered configuration, it included the Presario 1410 14" monitor with integrated speakers and microphone - it was the multimedia era after all! The factory 19.2k modem has a link cable back to the board for audio connectivity and the included Compaq MediaPilot software had a very slick looking CD player interface, fancy answering machine software and fax software that almost mimicked email function.

Factory upgrade options (which I dearly wish I could track down) included a COAST-style cache module, a wave table card and an MPEG card. ~~Sadly the cache module appears to be somewhat bespoke, none of the standard COAST modules I have work with this sytem~~ Cache is a pain in the bum and it took over twenty years, but we found some. The wave table header appears relatively standard (although obsolete, the AWE32 can do that job) but the MPEG module has a fancy looking double header... would be very interested in acquiring one of those!

Personal history

This particular example was purchased new by my father in 1996 and spent most of its life running Windows 95A and the NZA Gold accounting package. Of course, Compaq were nice enough to include Descent Destination Saturn and Magic Carpet as pack-ins with the system... so it definitely saw its time playing games.

I never got to fettle too much with the OS as a youngster but once the machine got retired from day to day use, I eventually took custody of it and have been slowly upgrading it ever since. Now, it's my mid-90s gaming weapon and does the job beautifully, I'll be streaming DOS and 95 games from it going forward.

Upcoming repairs and upgrades

As this system has been in the possession of either myself or my family for its entire existence, it tends to be spoiled to as many upgrades as possible, where possible. If we can find them, the next upgrades would be:

Compaq 213858-001 ESS wavetable module. It's a bespoke Compaq part with specific mounting to clip to the PL5600G motherboard, securing the whole setup. If I found one, the AWE64 would come out (I've got enough EMU8000 machines anyway) and we'd get to ~~endure~~ enjoy working with the ESS AudioDrive again, but with nice MIDI output!
Compaq 213857-001 MPEG controller module. Another bespoke part, the MPEG module appears to be an S3 Scenic/MX2 custom built to work with the integrated Trio64V+. This would also mean pulling the faster Trio64V2/DX out in order to use it, but I'm prepared to make that sacrifice.
Front cooling fan. The chassis has a mounting spot clearly intended for an intake fan, with mounting tabs and all... but no bracket, no fan and the header on the mainboard that clearly would've been for fan power isn't populated. With the advent of 3D printing and the improvement in my soldering skills over the years, I'm confident we could correct all of that.
Fans in general. All of the core noise in the Compaq comes from the stock power supply's 80mm exhaust fan. Could be nice to replace it with a Noctua 80mm Redux or something while installing a front fan.
Capacitors. None of them are leaking, but this machine is 30 years old... it may be coming due.