Actually, of all the "vomit box" type computers, Emachines is one of the best. Why? They use more-or-less standard components - a real mATX motherboard with at least two DIMM slots, at least one serial port, and two USB. Plus they have I've seen some HP's with NO PS/2, ONE (count it - A SINGLE) DIMM slot (occupied, naturally), and a serial mouse.. I'd be willing to bet that almost any component on an eMachine can be exchanged with an "industry standard" part and everything will work.. you can put in a different mATX motherboard, a different power supply (I think), add a PCI video card, second hard drive, DVD, upgrade the OS to Win2000, etc.. In addition, I was setting up an old parallel port scanner on a friend's dad's eMachine and during bootup, F2 gave me a FULL AMI BIOS - I could tweak parallel port settings, disable onboard sound (which was conflicting with the parallel port), and do ANYTHING you can do on a "regular" motherboard, save for overclocking.
Why? It _was_ a "regular" integrated motherboard, just configured to display an eMachines logo, the way my two Intel boards display the Intel Desktop Board logo when booting up.
Good luck doing that with a Compaq that uses a super-proprietary motherboard, PSU, doesn't let you access the BIOS, and comes with a specialized version of Windows 98 which you can't upgrade.
Good find..