Thread 11971468

Windows 95 has been released to general availability on 1995-08-24. It's been 30 years. Let's have a thread about Windows 95 OS, Windows 95 era hardware, Windows 95 era games and Windows 95 emulation.

My favorite Win 95 game is Civilization II

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JzfROUDsK0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miZHa7ZC6Z0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqL1BLzn3qc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVeFEBCwXy0

>>11971480
I have played several civ games but never actually finished civ 2. I should give it a try

Strange thing is from back in the day I remember that the loading time for Windows 95 was quite long. Meanwhile, last year I got myself an authentic retro-PC (P120, 16 Mb, S3 Virge with a worn out HDD) and even after some intensive shenanigans with my other video and sound cards (i. e. drivers, tests etc., also installing quite a lot of games) my Windows 95 Plus! still loads very fast (some 10-15 seconds).

I guess, 15 seconds is a LOT when you're a kid.

>>11971480
It was actually a Win3.11 game first.

>>11971468 (OP)
>It's been 30 years.
finally

Should I use PCemu or 86box for win 95 emulation?

best Windows, every version since has been getting too complicated for no good reason
>pic related also for DOS and Mac

How well is .NET running on it now?

>>11971482
HOVER! is supremely based, is there any way to play this on modern PC?

>>11971468 (OP)
My family's first PC ran '95.
The very first game I ever played on it was some shareware demo version of a random DOS game called TRUGG that came preinstalled, shortly followed by PuttPutt Joins The Parade.

>>11971497
calmira is so comfy

>>11971546
If you have a good enough pc to run 86box full speed with the hardware you want to emulate then use it. Otherwise use PCem. You’ll need to test.

i miss this lil nigga like you wouldnt believe

Castle of the Winds 1 & 2

>>11971546
PCem is definitely faster. However, the latest nightly 86Box has a LOT more features now, and it actually runs smoother so long as it's running at full speed. Provided you set it up right, it has just about perfect frame pacing and very low input lag. On my machine I can even set it up to run at a refresh rate of 120 Hz with the mouse polling rate set to 200 Hz and mouse movement is nearly as smooth as on my host. I can't seem to do that on PCem.

>>11971989
Yeah, PCem is basically just the option for lower-end PCs at this point.

>>11971468 (OP)
Have kept a copy of this on every laptop/PC I've ever had to this day. Still GOATed

>>11971468 (OP)
Quake
Monster Truck Madness
Encarta 95
Cinemania
Freecell
Minesweeper
Solitaire
Fuji Golf
https://archive.org/details/wep_20200803

>>11971546
Am i the retard to use vmware? I never had problems with it

>>11972261
If it's for simple games, it probably works well enough. It's not adequate for anything using hardware acceleration, though.

>>11972206
>>11972263
Reminder the original creator of SkiFree released a 32-bit version that's perfectly playable on modern Windows.

>>11971482
>You know, Windows has been ready to launch, now... the launch event was originally gonna happen in March, then you heard about that whole "silly little mix-up with the Justice Department!" Those wacky folks!
>They were refusing to give their "okay," so Bill asked me to kind of step in, uh, go to Washington and try to smooth things over; again that's why I was brought in on this project. When I met with the folks in Washington, intitially, ya see, hear's the delay; initially, I forgot to tell 'em about Windows '95 ability to "delete files."
>Once the Whitewater people, the Senators, once they heard you could delete files, MAN! They had to have it!! They had to have it, and they put it right through!!!

>>11971468 (OP)
I wrote a fair chunk of it. Sorry, we were mainly focused on windows 2000 Pro. Don't even start me on the windows me abomination
I have ship itawards for wi 95, win 95 osr2, win 98, windows me, windows 2000 professional, NT 4 SP 4, Windows 2000 server, Windows XP Windows NT4 SBS and Windows CE

Yes, really. I was never proud of win 98. was proud of windows 2000 professional.

I'm not doing myself either

>>11971482
>watching Jay Leno and Bill Gates launch program files and video clips on the brand new Windows operating system
>Multiple programs, multiple files, all INSTANTLY launching. Zero loading, takes ZERO wait to navigate and use what you want
Man, FUCK Windows 11. It takes 9 seconds for a SONG to start playing, there's so much bloated nonsense it has to work through.
But Windows 95?
Perfect library of instant access.

>>11971482
>Watching the launch advertisements, seeing everyone working on stage, in office, or marketing
>Everyone wears collared shirts and paisley neckties
Companies USED to support polite and intelligent representation 30 years ago...

>>11971482
I miss 30 years ago.

>>11972289
Yeah, i just use to play visual novel and disney cd rom games

>>11971664
PcEM or 86Box.

My recommendation, go to the 86Box discord and find the configs channel where people share their Windows 98 configs. Grab a good one and just load the game's ISO into 86Box and you're set.

>>11971989
Weird question but you seem knowledgeable. I want to build a modern PC that runs Linux and 86Box tha uses the latest Silverstone FP1 beige case.

What specs should I use if I want everything from Win 3.1 all the way to Win 98?

Curious for your thoughts, please answer

>>11971989
We're getting a new 86Box stable release tomorrow and it will have the new built-in manager too

>>11972940
The short answer is: get the best CPU you can afford.

Longer answer: What are you wanting to run on Windows 98? The OS itself doesn't require a whole lot to run smoothly. If you want to run 3D accelerated games at good framerates, though, you'll ideally want to emulate a ~300 MHz Pentium II, and that definitely requires a very good host CPU. As a point of comparison, the very best Ryzen CPU on the market today is just capable of emulating a 450 MHz Pentium II at full speed with almost any Win9x-era game you throw at it, more or less capping out at Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament, and that's WITH overclocking. Most games do not require something that insane, though.
>>11972959
You certainly can tell by the flurry of commits. They're really rushing to get it out this time after the delay earlier in the month.

>>11973063
Sorry to sound retarded but what specific Ryzen CPU model?

Asking since my last few builds have been Intel based so I don't know the equivalent AMD CPU honestly.

My last build was like an i7 from 2016.

The comp I built around 2007 used an AMD Athlon 3200 for comparison. Between those eras I just used some laptops.

>>11971468 (OP)
>be me, late 90s, 13yo, Friday night, not a care in the world
>walk over to best friends house after school gets out for sleep over
>stop by Albertsons on the way there and stock up on candy, Doritos, Pepsi and Mountain Dew.
>order a pizza when we get to his house
>boot up his dad’s high end PC in the living room
>spend the next 9 hours playing Quake 3, Alien vs Predator, and System Shock 2 while blasting Rammstein and Marilyn Manson from his stereo
>sleep until 3pm Saturday and do it all over again the following evening

God damn, I miss it so much guys.

>>11973073
Not him but these are the latest AMD CPUs:
https://pcpartpicker.com/products/cpu/#F=103

just use QEMU with GPU passthrough for fucks sake

>>11973426
>QEMU

>>11973445
**with GPU passthrough
you don't need to "emulate old hardware" you dingus

>>11972587
Windows 11 is such jeet shit, I use it in work and it's fucking shocking it's supposed to be part of the same line.

>>11973475
In some cases yes you do, otherwise 86Box wouldn’t exist

>>11973475
What GPU are you going to be passing through to a windows 95 machine? I'm assuming your PC has ISA, VLB or PCI slots if you think it's so trivial.

Windows 95 gaming.... basically means that you have a computer startup prompt that asks you if you want to use Windows, or DOS to play games.

>>11973958
There were dedicated Windows games that didn't work on DOS back then

86Box 5.0 is out:
https://github.com/86Box/86Box/releases/tag/v5.0
https://github.com/86Box/roms/releases/tag/v5.0

>>11974124
is it less slow?

>>11973915
be specific
>>11973920
how about my own?

You're playing games that are already playable on W10 to begin with

>>11974136
sure but I'm on Arch, not W10

>>11974132
Is that qemu-3dfx? The guy behind that is deranged and wants insane amount of money for binaries.

>>11974139
The point is they don't have compatibility issues with modern hardware because they use APIs that are compatible with modern hadware (DirectX, OpenGL, etc)

>>11974140
true and true, but boy it's fucking fantastic (for my purposes)
>>11974142
sure! but they're windows apps so

>>11971480
>>11971486
You can run Civ2 on modern PCs using the civ2uia launcher: https://github.com/FoxAhead/Civ2-UI-Additions

>>11972940
Best Ryzen cpu you can find.

If you just want a relatively cheap jack-of-all-trades, get the 8600G or 8700G, it has a monster iGPU built in, but it will need very fast ddr5 memory to really shine since performance scales straight up with faster memory.

>>11974140
you can download pre-compiled and pre-setup versions on archive.org

>>11974126
I think it uses the new dynamic recompiler so some stuff might be faster
It will always be relatively demanding though as it's a low level emulator that emulates every single hardware component of a machine, which is why it's extremely accurate

>>11974156
So 8700G with 32 gigs DD5 RAM? Asking since I have an AMD ASUS Radeon R7 240 2GB DDR3 PCI-E 3.0 Video Graphics Card that can do VGA out to an actual CRT monitor easily.

>>11971468 (OP)
What would have been the most common desktop resolution for Win95 when it was new? 640x480 or 800x600? Surely 1024x768 wasn't more commonplace until later?

>>11976076
640x480 because most crt monitors where small

>>11972578
You worked for Microsoft in Washington?

>>11972578
98 SE was pretty good from what I can recall.

>>11974156
I'm running a Ryzen 7 3800X paired with 32GB of DDR4 and I can emulate a P2 233 running Windows 98 SE at 100% with no problems.

I'm running it on a Windows 98 system rather than 95, but I got a big box of this childhood favourite of mine recently and it's peak Win95 arcade racer kino.

>>11976178
The box on its side is it larping as a race bike leaning in a corner.

>>11976076
The Win95 resolution you'll want to use also depends on your current monitor's resolution. Unless you use a shader like sharp bilinear to fix scaling (but make the image a tiny bit softer), you'll want to use integer scaling or else it will look like shit. If you only have a 1080p display you can't scale 600p 2x, and Win95 isn't really made for high resolutions (everything will look microscopic), so yeah, 480p integer scaled 2x will look good on a 1080p monitor.
I personally have a 1440p monitor so I integer scale 800x600 2x (pic related)

>>11976461
The sweetspot for me is 1024x768.
Almost done with the new version of my pack for those that care, btw.

>>11976467
That looks too small for me but maybe it's because my 1440p monitor as a higher DPI

>>11973491
I'd take ME and use it as a daily driver over one day with 11.

>>11976565
I also have a 1440p screen. When I fullscreen it, I use a shader similar to sharp-bilinear (forgot which one exactly, but it delivers similar results is all I know), and it looks good IMO.

>>11976178
Great game, and the PC version is butter smooth compared to the PSX version

>>11976076
Back in 2001 our typing class was filled with hand-me-down 486s/Pentium 1s from other schools that were brand new around 94-95. All of them still had Windows 95 installed and most of them were configured to display at 640x480. I remember we played a lot of Snood on them during down time or when the teacher was out of the room.

>>11976575
Oh, in that case yeah, it'll look fine

>>11976467
I care, cool to hear that you're still working on it, anon.

>>11976575
I just tested with the same setup (1024x768 upscaled to 1440p) and I think Pixel_aa is the sharpest shader for this specific non-integer scaling situation

You now realize FFVII was a Win95 game.

>>11971664
Have you tried doubleclicking on hover.exe?
A lot of you folks are using shit like 86box for absolutely no reason. While there's some Windows 95 games that don't have DOS or Win 3.1 versions and absolutely refuse to run on newer Windows, they're few and far between.
And in my experience they don't usually work in 86Box either due to things like copy protection abusing the CD drive in ways that simply can not be emulated, or FMV syncing that's directly tied to CD seek latency.

>>11971664
Hover is one of the very, very few 9x-era games that should "just werk" on modern Windows.

DXball

speaking of
how tf do you get DXball to run at the right speed on a modern computer?

>>11976867
Haven't played it back in the day but I just downloaded it from here and it seemed to run at a reasonable speed:
https://www.myabandonware.com/game/dx-ball-bf0#download

>>11976896
it doesnt
it plays normal speed until you blow something up and/or have a powerup on screen. then it chugs to like 1/8th speed
i had to run it through dxwnd to get it to play somewhat normally, but the speed still varies slightly which makes it way shittier to play than it was

>>11976576
I'm running it on a Voodoo 1 so it's not massively smoother especially when the Pentium MMX CPU freaks out when there's too many bikes on screen, but it's still a nicer experience all around.

>>11976928
What kind of monitor do you have? A lot of these old games ran at 70hz and it might fuck shit up if your monitor is only 60hz
In any case I just cleared a couple of stages and it never slows down for me

>>11976867
If you just wanna play the classic boards, they're available as DLC for DX-Ball 2, which is included in the complete pack. You can get it on either Steam as the 20th anniversary remaster version or a DRM-free copy of the original DX-Ball 2 here:
https://www.humblebundle.com/widget/v2/product/dxb2_complete/MBn9dDRtRH

Add an upscale pack, new levels and a few new features, and Hover will be a legit great game.

>>11977043
Multiplayer could be fun

>>11973063
NTA, but I'm (almost) interested in making a machine, but with old hardware. I know shit's old and rare, but the authenticity, if I'm using the word right, is appealing. Going by the benchmarks of Deus Ex, for starters, I would figure a Pentium III system would serve well for 9x and pre-XP NT, 386/486 maybe I can use something on Vogons to slow down the CPU. Sure as hell won't be able to get a Voodoo, so I need to figure out the best ATI or Nvidia card. Sound card would also be hard to get. Maybe I would be better off with a Pentium IV system? PCI and the integrated sound chips would help out, plus I could expand to some XP era titles before the mid 00s.

>>11977246
deus ex does not run great on P3 if you are sensitive to sub 60 fps

>>11977256
Not even on 1024x768? Reckon I could go with the P4, probably trade DOS compatibility for it.

>>11977502
Nigga just play Dude Sex on your modern machine. There is practically no reason to build a retro PC for it

>>11977502
It's a CPU limited game so resolution doesnt change much but a 1.4Ghz Pentium 3 should run that game ok. P4 can do ACPI throttling so speed sensitive DOS games can work pretty good

>>11977246
save your money and just use fan patches and 86box

>>11976076
800x600 was probably the most common in the later half of the 90's, that was what I was using back then on my P100 in '96.

>>11977246
I current have a 100 Mhz Pentium with 32 MB ram, 333 MHz Celeron with 128 MB ram, 1.3 Ghz Duron, 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 with 512 MB ram dell workstation, and Pentium 3 laptop with broken HD (can boot into puppy linux 5.5 from dvd)

The 100 MHz Pentium and Celeron haven't been booted in over a decade so the hard drives are probably seized up, the Duron, P4 and P3 laptop were booted up this year and sill work.
Rather than wasting power running them, I just use PCem since it's good enough without the headaches of keeping up real machines.

>>11977502
I've seen videos of people installing DOS on Core 2 Duo systems of all things. A P4 is probably a better bet at this point, since they're still not prohibitively expensive.

>>11971468 (OP)
Zoomer born in 2000 here. Were there REALLY versions of Windows before Vista? I thought that was just a meme.

>>11978891
bait used to be believable

>>11977838
>the hard drives are probably seized up
Unless your drives are from the 80s or very early 90s they'll be fine. You've been watching too many youtube videos. I'd be more worried your laptop screen getting vinegar syndrome. Two of mine from that era with sony panels have started to get funky.

>>11973113
>spend the next 9 hours playing Quake 3, Alien vs Predator, and System Shock 2 while blasting Rammstein and Marilyn Manson from his stereo
Are you me?

>>11978887
I'm also starting to consider an old Dell Optiplex with XP installed, figure it'll be the easiest. Ironically, I'd just thrown out a 755 desktop a week or two ago. First PC I ever bought, after selling my PS3. Eh, more fond of the Acer Aspire my grandpa hardly used, even if it is a bit weaker.
>>11977514
Negro, I want to build a PC to play it. My library is 2/3rds old shit.

>>11979638
>Dell Optiplex
I'd be very careful with these. Some of the models from the P4 days were made during the capacitor plague, and if they even work still, they're ticking time bombs. I would particularly avoid the GX260-280 series, ESPECIALLY the GX270. That one had like a 50% failure rate.
>t. tested and worked with literally hundreds of Optiplexes circa 2008-2012

>>11971989
did the autist finally made 86box multicore?

>>11971480
hell yes

>>11979638
>My library is 2/3rds old shit
Name 3 of the games in your library that can't be played on your current PC

>>11979880
lol no, ain't happening anytime soon chief

>>11974156
Why a Ryzen CPU? If the emulator is still single-threaded, Intel currently beats AMD CPUs in single-threaded performance ratings. Ryzen is better for multi-threaded games/applications.

>>11979880
You can't really multi-thread a single core 80s/90s PC emulation. It does do multi-threading on stuff like the voodoo emulation because the original hardware had multiple TMUs so there's no real concurrency issues. But if your single core performance isn't up to running a 450MHz P2 at 100%, you can't fix that with multi-threading. Global state locks prevent it. We've tried doing transactional opportunistic threading where you just fire off and hope for the best, rolling it back if you find a deadlock, and while that works for non-interactive compute tasks, it's basically useless for interactive realtime stuff. Hell, it already has plenty of input lag just doing its dynarec, imagine what it would be like if you had to wait for 10 threads to resolve in between mouse movement.
You want better performance? You have to hope someone brings Rosetta like static recompilation to the table, but given the age of the programs we expect to run it's kind of a tall order. Apple got to blacklist anything with self modifying code, not really possible when you want to run 90s shit.

>>11981731
Are you an 86Box dev?

>>11981628
>Intel currently beats AMD CPUs in single-threaded performance ratings
True, but not by that much
IMO it's not worth buying a CPU that has slightly better single thread performance if it's much worse at everything else. There's a reason why no one recommends Intel these days

>>11978891
Yes, there was windows me
>t. 1997 zoomer

>>11982076
>There's a reason why no one recommends Intel these days
The reason has to do more with pricing and people being generally upset with Intel's company policies than actual performance. There's a similar push against Nvidia where people are trying to insist that AMD GPUs are just as or almost as good, especially from troonix users since Nvidia support is shite on their OS of choice.

>>11982114
>The reason has to do more with pricing

Figured I'd ask here since this is the only computer thread on the board right now: 16-Bit or 32-Bit?
I bought a ThinkPad T42 and figured I would install Windows 98 on it, but if XP 16-Bit is compatible with Win98 software out-of-the-box then I think XP would be a better alternative, generally speaking.

I really don't know shit about these compatibility issues, I just know most stuff was 16-Bit, but Blood Money needs a 32-Bit OS, either ME or XP so fuck me, I guess. haha!

>>11982267
?
Every 9x Windows is 32-bit

>>11982267
I found this guide on Vogons on how to install Windows 98 on a Thinkpad T42, try this dude:

https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=47591

>>11982269
You know what? You are correct and I am retarded. I confused 64-Bit and 16-Bit for some fucking reason.
I've literally been thinking about this for the last week and of course I wouldn't find anything about it because it's a problem I made in my head.

>>11982271
Will check it out. Thanks.

>>11982271
Whoops sorry it's not a guide but rather some important drivers for the T42.

Give the normal installation a try.

I personally would try to follow along with some random PCEm or 86Box Windows 98 installation video but do it on real hardware. The steps are mostly the same.

>>11982279
Normal installation of Windows 98. Goddamn my clarity is off today.

Worst case scenario if you fuck up on steps, post here or open up a new thread of Vogons to "pay it forward" since I guarantee someone else will find it useful if they have a Thinkpad T42.

Just saying since Vogons is one of the last good resources / communities for older Windows 9X stuff imo.

I understand it's not the same nor as powerful as a period appropriate desktop computer, but I must say, these business laptops sure are convenient if you want to get your feet wet with real hardware (if you can get them working with minimal effort, of course).
T42 for 98 and T60 for XP, that's my goal.

>>11976467
doing god's work, anon

>>11982337
Agreed. He's my favorite /v/ autist, and probably the only dude I legit would want to be friends with here.

People who know old computers are the best imo.

What's the best 90's Encarta software? I only ever used '97 and have fond memories of it.

Am I experiencing a Mandela effect with Spider Solitaire? I swore that the win animation from Windows Solitaire was also in Spider Solitaire

>>11982920
They get more articles and features with every year, but of course if you're more nostalgic about 97 you might prefer it
I like 98 personally, especially the intro music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acuosToYtVs

>>11982920
Encarta '94 on a 3.1 machine. It's very soulful.

>>11982930
>>11982939
I'll check it out. By any chance, is it possible to run it without the CD? I doubt it, but may as well ask.

>>11982943
>is it possible to run it without the CD?
If there's a way, I'm not aware.

>>11981731
frankly i decided to boot a win95 build here with the 2600x i have and is quite damn good now to run even battlezone off the gold edition iso.

>>11982961
I managed to get some old Windows games to work without a CD through a couple different ways, usually involving some combination of copying certain files and folders to the game directory and finding either a config file or registry key that points to a data directory on the CD drive and modifying it to point to the game directory instead. This mostly only seems to work on older titles, though, before companies wised up to this shit.

Oh? Could it be?

>>11983152
Would really be nice if you can make it work. Especially the Deluxe version

It works! It's the Deluxe version, too!

I just had to copy over the missing data folders from the CDs to the Encarta directory, then modify any Registry entries that are pointed at the E: drive to look to the main Encarta directory instead. Videos and everything appear to work.

>>11973426
>thinks PCI, AGP, or ISA support passthrough
hush child, you know not of what you speak

>>11971468 (OP)
Much better than 98

>>11983694
98 is more stable and has much better driver support

For X86box, can you use nuked sc-55 (through LoopMidi)?

>>11983781
Yes

>>11983762
It is also more bloated, though thankfully there's 98lite. I do wish there was a way to keep the Explorer improvements without needing IE, though.

If you have SCVA installed, you can set to use system midi and use VST midi proxy.
its perfect

Also i am using a win95 install a anon uploaded here a while ago, sucks that is voodoo 1, but is running battlezone and such on the 2600x at full speed here, the only issues i had were with Warcraft 1 having slowdowns on DOS

>>11983208
Nice, I'll try that out next time

>>11976467
yesss

>>11984121
My new pack will use a Banshee instead, which is a lot more capable than the Voodoo, unlocks far higher resolutions in Windows, and may even be better for DOS (at least in theory, since it supports up to VESA 3.0). It'll also use Super Socket 7, which means you can use AMD K6-2 and III CPUs if your machine can handle them.

>>11984860
i tried to boot tie fighter cd and dos went full slow mode
Also it would be nice to add some shaders for it too

>>11972206
That snowman scared the shit out of me as a kid.

>>11984860
A banshee is even weaker than a Voodoo 2. It’s only advantage over it is that it can do 2D, but then you can just use a Voodoo 3 which also does 2D

>>11985006
I thought about it, and the reason I went with the Banshee over the Voodoo 2 is because 1. the games I'll be adding to the pack are not very intensive and probably won't benefit tremendously from the extra TMU (the CPU is more likely to be the bottleneck unless you have a powerful PC), and 2. I'd have to pair it with a good 2D card like one of the Matrox cards just to match the Banshee's 2D and resolution capabilities. Yes, a Voodoo 3 could also do the job, but again, that's overkill for the build I'm going for, and it loses out on DOS compatibility some. You can always modify it to your liking, of course, so long as you download the drivers.

>>11985178
86box now supports voodoo 3

>you now remember the After Dark screensavers software
back when i could entertain myself tweaking the settings of all the screensavers

>>11985178
Fair enough

Any of you tried Chicago95?

>>11981628
Mr. President...

Is there much reason to use 95 over 98? Any specific edge case /vr/ can attest to?

>>11982943
Just mount it using daemon or whatever else in a virtual drive

>>11985929
>daemon
Windows supports mounting ISOs natively since W10, you don't need any extra software for that
But you don't even need to do that when using an emulator like 86Box, you just select the ISO you want to insert in the VM directly in 86Box

>>11985912
>Is there much reason to use 95 over 98?
Not really unless you have a lot of nostalgia for 95 specifically. For most people, 98SE is the recommended option

>>11985912
It is leaner and faster than W98, but that's about it, and only if you stick to OSR2 or OSR2.1, as OSR2.5 implements the new Explorer shell that Windows 98 also uses, which while having more features is also heavier and sometimes is even the cause of instability (at least on Windows 95 - many of the bugs were fixed in 98SE). There may be the odd program or two that only wants to work in Windows 95 for whatever reason, but it's not common at all. And for what it's worth, there's a "lite" build of Windows 98SE that uses the old, lighter shell from Windows 95, making it just about as fast while still retaining most of Windows 98's benefits.

>>11985912
Windows 95's typeface fonts are slightly more sovlful than 98's, and it has a better startup sound though that barely matters when you can easily change it on Windows 98.

>>11985990
>OSR2.5 implements the new Explorer shell that Windows 98 also uses
When getting to an OSR2.5 desktop for the first time, just restart your machine when the Explorer setup Window appears and you won't have the new shell. It will also never bother you with it again

>>11976467

EXILE 1-3 JESUS

>>11986018
I did some testing between Windows 98 using the Windows 95 shell and the regular Windows 98 shell, and yeah, the latter is definitely slower. Not by a tremendous amount, mind you, but the difference is there on low-end machines. I'm sure it hardly matters if you have at least a 233 MHz Pentium MMX or so, though, and the Windows 98 shell is undoubtedly better and easier to navigate, IE integration nonwithstanding

>>11985806
looks bad

>>11987214
>the Windows 98 shell is undoubtedly better and easier to navigate
Don't use the "My Computer" explorer (top) in W95, use "Windows Explorer" that's in Start>Programs (bottom)

>>11987301
It's more than just the file manager. The newer shell also adds extra options like being able to easily create shortcuts on the desktop through a simple right-click Send To, as well as the ability to directly make changes to Start Menu folders and items on the Start Menu itself, among others. Again, shame that it's also tied to IE, though apparently some of the shittier aspects like Active Desktop can be decoupled.

>>11987382
Hmm... Now I kinda wanna try that 98lite thing

>>11987613
Easiest way right now is through the Windows 98 QuickInstall ISO:
https://github.com/oerg866/win98-quickinstall

>>11987692
Oh, so this is practically the same thing but open source?

>>11987703
Well, the installer and related modules are open source. It basically just takes a pre-made installation of Windows and quickly installs it on your hard drive. I've tested it, and it really does install really fucking fast.

Oh, and IIRC it also installs every official update, which is also nice.

>>11987778
Damn, I just installed the micro_directx81 ISO and I can confirm how fast it is
It's also great not having to babysit the installer. And damn, it even has 98lite included to swap shells at any time

>>11972485
Why did he feel the need to show us how baby snowmen are made?

>>11988146
That was the burning question of the time, I'm sure.

>>11976650
Damn, along with a graphics card, you also needed a sound card.

>>11988994
I remember downloading an MP3 of One Winged Angel off of Napster or something before I actually played the game and thinking it was the coolest shit (though I still prefer Dancing Mad). I didn't have a PlayStation, though, so I ended up getting it for PC instead. Imagine my disappointment when I got to Safer Sephiroth, hyped as fuck and ready to hear that epic music in its proper context, only to be met with a half-assed MIDI rendition instead.

>>11976178
Moto Racer is awesome and way better than on psx

>>11987692
>oerg866
I'll just keep using my original install CD lmao

>>11989694
Wtf is this type of autism

https://youtu.be/49AlABOBw2Q?si=2iVoB93gjELGRoMG

https://youtu.be/Viilv0Yjx4c?si=xphDAW6O2ReiaqgE

https://youtu.be/U0K-4jHucxs?si=1MNtKTSm29_VWGOv

https://youtu.be/mjlusi_h_XA?si=Ju9LOwlpzVydFKy9

https://youtu.be/njsruP0AnWc?si=Dgs8tlxYouA7zw3e

>>11990087
Our family's first PC ever was a Windows 95 machine with Packard Bell Navigator

>>11990110
is there a name for this visual style? with all the low res dots all over everything? its a distinct mid 90s computer look but idk what to call it

>>11990121
It's just dithering, which is used to compensate for low color depth. Without it there would be color banding everywhere and less perceived colors. GIFs often also use them because they're limited to 256 colors, but on modern, high DPI monitors it can be harder to notice
In fact video games still have color banding issues even today which is why a lot of them use some sort of noise/grain filter as some form of dithering to eliminate it

>>11990121
Here's an example of without and with dithering. Both images only have 16 colors

>>11990121
>>11990134
There's also the heavy use of prerendered graphics. That, together with relatively low frame rates in motion, completes the early to mid 90s PC software aesthetic for me.

>>11990110
I remember my HP Pavilion that I had circa 1998 came with a similar program that was set to begin at startup. It looked like comic book strips or drawing, though. I wanna say it was called HP Personal Page? Searches yield close to nothing about it, though.

>>11990121
I struggle to conceptualize how someone can not know what dithering is while being on this board.

>>11991521
without gatekeeping these are the kind of people you'll get

>>11991521
It's simple:
>be born in 2003
>be gay

>>11991521
>>11991524
>>11991535
It could just be a tech-illiterate normalfag. That said, the younger zoomers are unfortunately starting to get old enough to get nostalgic about their childhood in the mid to late 2000's, which is why you're seeing more and more of them try to force 7th-gen discussion here (though admittedly part of that could be Discord raid trolling), and this board is all but unmoderated now, so they get away with it more often than not.

Fuck you Steve Ballmer! How do you even do this?

For me

>>11991698
That's just Shinji with tits.

>>11971468 (OP)
Did it become abandonware? Could any computer made in the past decade even run it, or do you need a vintage computer that probably already has it?

>>11976650
>required 32 Mb RAM and sound card
>the PS1 version ran fine on 4 Mb RAM and no additional soundcard

>>11971468 (OP)
Not video games.

>>11991982
Back to your Windows XP thread, faggot.

>>11991946
it's basically as abandonware as amiga kickstart, the difference is there's noone at microsoft to breathe in your neck when you want to do a project based on an 30 years old system (internet archive freely uses win 3.1 to emulate old windows software)

you could theoretically run it on new hardware but there are plenty of issues. old windows will crash if you have too much ram, no drivers so you're stuck with pure VGA with no sound and will 100% your cpu so it's not very healthy in the long term

>>11991946
>>11992497
You can also freely download it from WinWorld, along with every version of Windows up to Windows 2000. It's telling that at one point they also hosted Windows XP, but that was the only one they were asked to take down by MS.

bump

>>11990121
>Is there a name for this?
If you ask this on /vr/ you should be instantly underage b&

>>11993987
>underage b&
Sadly, people born in 2007 are legally adults now

Here's where my updated pack stands at the moment. Some games are still missing because I'm a retard and deleted the game ISOs off my hard drive for whatever reason, so I gotta grab them again. I've also decided I'm not going to install a couple of the games from the previous pack, such as Doom 95, because let's face it, you're either gonna play that on DOS or a source port, and it performs worse anyway. It'll be included in the DOS companion pack I'll be releasing alongside this pack, though.

Other new things added to the pack include After Dark 10th Anniversary, which includes a few games along with a ton of neat screensavers. And speaking of screensavers, every officially included screensaver, wallpaper, and theme from Windows 3.x to Windows 2000/ME will be included as well.

>>11990121
Mazda posters should be banned from /vr/

>>11991521
im 40 and ive heard the term dithering before but i thought that was for video games in motion, much different than still images

>>11971468 (OP)
Trying to emulate a 1994 iso game on Windows 11. How does everyone else do it? I tried VirtualBox with a Windows 98 image I found on Archive, but it crashes after 5 minutes of playing and I haven't found the exact reason.

>>11996269
Is it a Windows or DOS game? If it's Windows, it's probably a 16-bit Windows 3.x application since it obviously predates Windows 95. You could try it on a Windows 3.11 install in DOSBox or, at worst, on PCem. The latter is almost guaranteed to work, but DOSBox is much faster.

>>11976178
Based.
MotoRacer was bundled with my dad's Presario lappy back when that was brand new. I played the shit out of that game.

>>11996269
What game specifically? Depending on the game it might even be perfectly playable on ScummVM. Even some dungeon crawlers like Eye of the Beholder or Lands of Lore are

>>11995396
>i thought that was for video games in motion, much different than still images
underrated

>>11995325
Include Pitfall 2 and Earthworm jim

>>11998113
I'd love to, but there are two issues here: one, they're not really games you install, as they run entirely off of the CD. The only thing they leave on the hard drive is an ini file saving your settings and IIRC your level progression for the games. Two, even if you could install them, they are Redbook audio games, so you'd have to mount the game image to play them with music regardless. I'm trying to install only games that are entirely self-contained to the hard drive or can be made to do so in order to reduce complexity. I may in the future put together a pack of games that need the game image to be mounted to work. We'll see.

>>11998141
>game requires mounting image
>drop immediately
I know this feel well and I don't blame you in the slightest.

>>11998148
Myrient has all of the original ISOs if you want them

>>11976178
Following up from this. I golded every mission on Rogue Squadron using a Sidewinder Force Feedback Pro. Probably the first time I've ever done that legit which feels nice.
Good game but several of the missions can eat a dick with their gold requirements.
Now I'm doing it again on my N64

I'm just about done with the new updated pack. I've reinstalled almost everything that was on the first pack. Everything here runs without needing a CD image. If there are any outstanding games you'd like to see included that don't require a CD or Redbook audio to run, now's the time (there's six slots left to fill in the desktop!). Hopefully I'll be releasing it either tomorrow or the next day, with the DOS Expansion Pack soon to follow.

>>11996269
>Trying to emulate a 1994 iso game on Windows 11
So you are trying to run a dos/windows 3.x game on win 98? Good job.
Use dosbox to get the game running normally.

God damn it, why are some adapters so fucking difficult to find?
I have the perfect system for a potential Win98/DOS build (Compaq Armada 7400 PII 266, S3 Virge MX 4MB, 2-chip ESS Audiodrive), but it uses that fucking 4-pin adapter. The only places which theoretically sell them ask for >$25 +shipping. While a basic-bitch Dell adapter w/ slightly wonky cables can be found for something like 10 bucks.

>>11976697
i don't know why everyone ignores this. i have had the same experience (on win10 at least with its mandatory multigig winsxs folder of all the legacy runtime shit), every 90s game i tried to run just worked or you had to put dgvoodoo and that was it

>>11991950
You know how S-E likes to keep their fmv cutscenes and 3D animations unoptimized and shit in those Kingdom Hearts ports? Remember the awful cloud versionson the Switch?
That's why.

>>11998507
Some people really like making things harder on themselves and think doing things the "easy way" damages their pride/ego.

I miss this game...

>>11976467
can you recommend a good source for disc/iso games? all my searches just bring me to either gog (not really applicable for running on my win95 install), dead torrents, or myabandonware where it just tells me to go buy the gog version of a game

>>11999731
you ever scour archive.org? i've gotten tons of old isos from there, most recently diablo 2 and windows xp

>>11999731
https://myrient.erista.me/files/Redump/IBM%20-%20PC%20compatible/
Those are the original discs though, so no included cracks

finally got picrel to work on windows 11. well the music doesnt play but the sfx do and i can listen to the ost on youtube if i want. very excited to play this game again. i bought the gog version and had to take some advice from their forums but its working using dxwnd

>>11998495
Good job anon, cant wait.

>>11999735
i have but i was hoping for something like myrient but with the games either precracked or including one you can download too

>>11995325
Is there a link for this?

>>12001156
I'll be sharing it soon. Just gotta do a bit of cleaning up and final testing to make sure everything works as it should, though of course some things may break regardless. This is still Windows 98 we're talking about here. I do wonder how many of the games in the pack would work on Windows 2000. Something to test for later, perhaps.

>>11971468 (OP)
It did not become alright until OSR2 though

>>12001507
>his is still Windows 98 we're talking about here
It sucked and I shoould know I wrote a chunk of it and several other Microsoft OSs .Windows 2000 Pro was however based.

Best Windows 2000 Professional/ Win95 OSR2
Worst Windows Me a fucking abomination driven by marketing alone. Honorable mention to NT4 SP3 and Win 3.11 and XP
Runner up worst Win98 and Win98 SE.

You install my shit. Still amazed by that.

Anyone else remember the Win95 retail distro on a billion 3.25 inch disks? Fuck.

>>12001507
>Windows 98

Why was it shit? Because we wree workinig in parallel on Windws 200 Pro and it was considered a secondary project minimalist bugfixing and cool fixes or improvement swent into Wn2k pro which wa sthe basis for XP (although I hated and hate the windows XP default UI)
Yes Iam real and not larping ask away I am long out of NDA

I mainly worked on hal and drivers by the way and some control panels, servicves apis and utilities. There were only about a thousand blue badge devs checvking code in to theseOSs and here I am. Before you start Nillg was actually prety based and an acute coding brain. My opinion of balmer is far far lower. Jim Allchin was cool too there were a lot of genuine genuises in MS at the time (I was not one of them, I worked 24/7 to keep up with them). Plug and Play, USB. PCMCIA ACPI etc were revolutionary stuff. The biggest downside to win95/98 was its legacy support for jumered ISA cards that IGV (independent hardware vendors) had left as a curse to end users where base addresses adn IQs still had to be manually set on the cards with jumpers or in the BIOS. This was 90% of all blue screens. The kernel was not isolated like it was in NT or W2K so a badly written driver from a thord party could make it unstable. IRQ conflicts etc etc

>>12001703
I think most everyone realizes and acknowledges the NT framework and kernel was vastly superior to the Win9x one and gladly switched out once it became fleshed out with features attractive to non-workstation/server users. Most people who still install it on retro systems do so simply because it is more widely compatible with games made up to the late 90's.

>>12001703
>I wrote a chunk of it and several other Microsoft OSs
Yes Anon, I'm sure you did

>>12001736
It was the idea for hal came out of an MS genius who had worked for DEC. I think it is very based of you guys to keep by work alive a bit and I hope you have a ton of fun doing it. Fun fact, I can't even get a job now because I am too old for consideration. I entertain myself writing stuff for retro systems like 8 bits and 16 bits. The win32 API was vasyly underrated and was actually one of the best toolboxes that ever existed in IT. Nt 4.0 got really good with SP4.0 it took a while to mature but was a decent OS. Still maintain that win2k was the best think MS ever shipped and certainly the best work I ever did. I have hunch that much of Win10 still has a high percentile of the code in it relatively untouched. Popular mechanics at the time said w2kpro was one of the most complex engineering feats in history and it was, everything got competely rewritten and made right

>>12001747
Yes I did. I still have ship it awards and an old blue badge but I'm not doxing myself. Who do you think wrote it the fairies? here's a proof, we used to check in code using a system called SLM which we pronounced slime.

>>12001754
Why do you hate NT 4.0? I think that's still the original pure Windows and best of its class for decades.

>>12001747
High had a very high niumber of files on disk running into the hundreds on all these
Win 95 OSR2
Win 98
Win98SE
Windows NT 4.0 SP4
Windows NT server
Windows 2000 professional
Windows 200 server
Windows XP (all versions)
Asd well as SDKs and DDKs
As well as some other bits in shit like windows CE

>>12001760
I don't hate it, however it rested on legacy non PnP hardware with card jumper selection and legacy BIOS, it was pre PnP and suffered badly from that in blue screens which consumers blamed on MS and not the harwdare vendos or their own fubar. Its shine was in its pedigree in W2KPro. Even its SPs were secondary efforts to W2KPro as was 98 /SE/Me. It had great SCI suppor. IIS on ot was shit and a 1,0 .I actually got a few ship its for NT4.0 variants and SPs so I'm not speaking out of turn

Also apologies, I am on a shity sized keyboard rn

>>12001747
I'm genuine and MS could not give a flying fuck about me now and has not for 20 years

>>12001747
I also worked on dev kits for other platforms like consoles for other companies later mainly on hardware abstraction I was a big advocate and enabler for PnP buses. IT went to shit after the .com crash and all the marketing, project management, HR and MBA parasites swarmed the industry. Modern IT is a virtual cargo cult of ineptitude, I'm not sure they can even rewrite some of the 20+ year old stuff they are still recompiling, the skillsets are gone across the board and not just in MS.

True story, on one of the beta builds billg plugged a USB mouse in on a machine while it was booting and it blescreed on stage. The guy responsible for the mosue driver locked himself in his office for days trying to fix it and was found collapsed on the floor. Had to be taken to hospital. He did fix it though, sometime syou have to stay awake long enough to repro and underatnd the problem and then while your brain has the situation fully comprehended and process a solution and implement it before the full understanding erodes away.. Again BillG is (was?) actually based and a full on techie at heart and a gifted coder. He was the first business owner to really treat software engineers well.

>>12001794
You are right... damn.

>>12001810
If I was right all the time my ex wife would not have got most of the money I made in Microsft. Live and learn. I getb the feeling that document and proccedularise software devlopemt and garbage like SCRUM has left IT full of bullshit artists that can't even read a few lines of assembler. A handful of people write the code that makes new bus technologies like PCI funnction you know and when they are gone, they are gone. I see this truth in companies liek Intel. Also Scot McNealy was a retarded faggot and Java was a disaster for the world.

>>12001817
Yet I am telling you the truth. What makes you think that being a old MS dev is even that remarkable? Literally none gves a fuck about now 'obsolete' tech and devs you know.

Almost nobody who worked on Win2K Pro in dev or senior test is still at MS by the way

Well that's enough for me, Thank you OP for keeping my work alive and enjoy.

One last post
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgqEIp2YmtE

>>12001830
You said it yourself. Nobody cares. There's no need to call attention to it. You're not contributing anything to the thread, you're just calling Windows shit. What a stunning and brave opinion, never heard that one before!

Here's to your 15 minutes of shame.

>>12001875
bye then and fuck your type of troll

>>12001875
>>12001875
>you're just calling Windows shit
>>12001750
>Still maintain that win2k pro was the best thing MS ever shipped and certainly the best work I ever did.

>>12001703
>Runner up worst Win98 and Win98 SE
Isn't 98SE the most stable of 9x though? Or is that 95 OSR2?

>>12002675
One usually stated source of instability from Windows 95 OSR2.5 onward is the forced integration of Internet Explorer into the Windows shell. If the IE component crashes, the shell crashes as well. The old Windows 95 shell is more basic and has less features, but it is also faster and more stable.

>>12001747
Are you just realising you're on a board for irredeemable nerds?

>>12001703
>>12001747
On one hand, only a fool would take anything posted on this website as fact
On the other hand, pic related

>>12002829
There's also 98lite which replaces 98's IE shell with the one from 95.

>>11971480
https://scratch.mit.edu/users/ihanfarley3009/

Can you follow me?

>>11971480
Can you follow me? https://scratch.mit.edu/users/ihanfarley3009/

>>12004330
>>12004349
Lurk moar.

>>12002829
>>12004282
Yep, there's this nice ISO posted earlier in the thread that's a debloated 98micro with a fast installer:
https://github.com/oerg866/win98-quickinstall/releases
Just grab win98qi_v0.9.6_micro_directx81.iso

>>12004528
Isn't DirectX 8.1 kinda overkill for Windows 98? Pretty much every DX8 title is best played on at least XP-era hardware.

>>12005380
I mean, kinda, but there's no downside to having it either

>>12005385
I read somewhere that it's somehow slower, but they didn't elaborate so maybe it was bullshit.

>>11987301
>Temporary Internet Files
bring me back

>>12001703
Replace 98SE with 95C/OSR2.5 as worst runner up. Pointless update with half-assed, alpha-quality USB/AGP support and the cursed IE4 desktop update. It made 95 so pig disgusting bloated you might as well use 98 instead.

>>12004528
does this work in 86box? I tried installing but it freezes at IO.SYS during boot.

>>12005896
It should, I was able to install the micro version at least. Maybe it doesn't like the hardware configuration? I got it to work with a Super Socket 7 setup.

>>11989753
That's literally half these freaks, I'm in some of the servers and at LEAST half of them are troons.

>>12005927
yeah that does it. was using one of the i430VX machine (HOT-557).

>>12006059
Yeah, honestly, SS7 just seems a lot more versatile. You can use anything from Pentium MMX to AMD K6-III+, plus AGP support. Seems like a no brainer unless you wanna emulate the early Pentiums.

>>11972206
I liked following the dog around until it shits in the snow.

>>11971576
No