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Is there a way to run W95 on a modern mobo? I have recently gotten Windows 95B setup CD and am wondering how to see it running. One way must be getting a W95 era mobo from eBay and installing on it. How about installing it on a virtual machine? Is there a virtual software which takes W95? Isn't hardware compatibility still the problem? Does the virtual software resolve that problem?
My objective is just to satisfy my curiosity. Any comment appreciated.

Go VM, no modern motherboard has Win95 drivers.

Dear god, yes, put it in Microsoft Virtual PC. Should be able to get that for free (in Win7 Pro & up it's part of WinXP Mode). No Win9x drivers for modern hardware at all. Your useful cutoff would probably be early Pentium 4 era or Athlon XP - Win98 drivers /should/ work assuming they're not WDM. Win95 only supports VxD drivers.

VirtualBox doesn't have full guest support for Win9x (network drivers only, I think) and I don't think VMware Player does anymore either.

Virtual PC 2007 if you don't have Win7 Pro, Enterprise, or Ultimate: https://www.microsoft.com/download/en/d ... px?id=4580

You'll need the guest additions from Virtual PC 2004, which should be available somewhere, and which will work with '07 (and probably the WinXP Mode flavor as well).

edit: Wackypedia says I'm wrong about being unable to use the "Windows Virtual PC" flavor on cheaper versions of Win7, so there's that.

VMWare workstation 8 does have a Windows 95 option. I have never tried it, so have no idea if it works or not, but it looks fully supported.

Flying Fox wrote:

Go VM, no modern motherboard has Win95 drivers.

What host OS can be used on which to run the VM? What is the point of using VM? If I have to use mobo which supports Win95 then why not installing Win95 directly on it?

bthylafh wrote:

Dear god, yes, put it in Microsoft Virtual PC. Should be able to get that for free (in Win7 Pro & up it's part of WinXP Mode). No Win9x drivers for modern hardware at all. Your useful cutoff would probably be early Pentium 4 era or Athlon XP - Win98 drivers /should/ work assuming they're not WDM. Win95 only supports VxD drivers.

Practically the same question to Flying Fox as above: If I have to use early Pentium or Athlon XP era mobo then why not installing Win95 direct instead of via the Microsoft Virtual PC?

LaChupacabra wrote:

VMWare workstation 8 does have a Windows 95 option. I have never tried it, so have no idea if it works or not, but it looks fully supported.

What does "A VM has a Win95 option" mean? Does that mean that the Win95 can run regardless of motherboard and its peripheral hardwares on which the host OS for the VM is running?

You don't need extra hardware or waste money buying same? Win95 needs little RAM to run (one could get it to run with 8MB back in the day) so it's not going to strain anything faster than an Atom to run a virtual machine.

You said you don't have the vintage hardware yet, so that should be pretty obvious.

As to your other question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_P ... ng_systems

churin wrote:

LaChupacabra wrote:

VMWare workstation 8 does have a Windows 95 option. I have never tried it, so have no idea if it works or not, but it looks fully supported.

What does "A VM has a Win95 option" mean? Does that mean that the Win95 can run regardless of motherboard and its peripheral hardwares on which the host OS for the VM is running?

Virtual Machines usually emulate common hardware that the OS should have drivers for, so it does not see your real physical hardware. Or the VM host program will give you "tools" or "integrations" to install additional drivers inside the VM.

If you're ok with 16 color VGA graphics or have an old PCI video card with Win95 drivers, you should be able to run natively on the hardware by setting SATA to IDE or "legacy" mode in the BIOS. As far as network and sound support, you'd probably need to find older PCI cards for those, too.

If you want to virtualize it without loading Win7, install your favorite version of Linux and use VMWare Player or VirtalBox to run a Win95 VM.

Speaking as someone who had to live with Win95 for several years in both the 'a' upgrade form from floppy disk(!) and later a 'B' CD, I'd say you're not missing much.

But, if you're sold on the idea of playing with antiques, check eBay or Craigslist for old laptops. You can pick up working P233MMX units for less than $30, and any brandname unit (Dell, ThinkPad) should have drivers still floating around on the Internet if Win95 doesn't support any of the hardware natively. Verify that it has a power brick included, though, as the battery will be hopeless.

Flying Fox wrote:

churin wrote:

LaChupacabra wrote:

VMWare workstation 8 does have a Windows 95 option. I have never tried it, so have no idea if it works or not, but it looks fully supported.

What does "A VM has a Win95 option" mean? Does that mean that the Win95 can run regardless of motherboard and its peripheral hardwares on which the host OS for the VM is running?

Virtual Machines usually emulate common hardware that the OS should have drivers for, so it does not see your real physical hardware. Or the VM host program will give you "tools" or "integrations" to install additional drivers inside the VM.

This is exactly what I thought the VM does. Win95 does not have to deal with the modern hardwares, and instead the VM takes care of them.
The link posted by bthylafh indicates Virtual PC 2004 is the only VM which support Win95. But I checked VMWare Workstation 8 as is mentioned in Lachupacabra's post and found that amazingly it supports from Windows 3.1 to Windows 8!

I am sold for VMWare Workstation 8. Here is what I am going to do: Install a spare 250GB SATA HD on my machine with GA-790XTA-UD4, install W7 Ult x64 on the HD, isnstall VMWare Workstation 8 on W7, then install Win95B. I know how to install Win95 onto Win95 era machine and assume I can follow the same procedure to install it on the VM. I appreciate any comment before I proceed.

churin wrote:

I am sold for VMWare Workstation 8. Here is what I am going to do: Install a spare 250GB SATA HD on my machine with GA-790XTA-UD4, install W7 Ult x64 on the HD, isnstall VMWare Workstation 8 on W7, then install Win95B. I know how to install Win95 onto Win95 era machine and assume I can follow the same procedure to install it on the VM. I appreciate any comment before I proceed.

Grats, VMWare is great. When you say install a spare 250GB hard disk do you mean you already have a disk up and running on your system? And if so, what operating system is installed on it?

You can try just the VMware Player or VirtualBox if you don't want to pay for Workstation. I would imagine you don't really need all the fancy features that VMware Workstation gives you, right?

LaChupacabra wrote:

churin wrote:

I am sold for VMWare Workstation 8. Here is what I am going to do: Install a spare 250GB SATA HD on my machine with GA-790XTA-UD4, install W7 Ult x64 on the HD, isnstall VMWare Workstation 8 on W7, then install Win95B. I know how to install Win95 onto Win95 era machine and assume I can follow the same procedure to install it on the VM. I appreciate any comment before I proceed.

Grats, VMWare is great. When you say install a spare 250GB hard disk do you mean you already have a disk up and running on your system? And if so, what operating system is installed on it?

I do not want to mess with the W7 system I am using now, so that I add an extra HD to the machine and carry out the experiment on it.

Flying Fox wrote:

You can try just the VMware Player or VirtualBox if you don't want to pay for Workstation. I would imagine you don't really need all the fancy features that VMware Workstation gives you, right?

I have just checked the VMWare Player and the VirtualBox and found that the former does support Win95 but the latter does not.
Well then, I should try the VMWare Player instead.

churin wrote:

I do not want to mess with the W7 system I am using now, so that I add an extra HD to the machine and carry out the experiment on it.

Got it. Just for your future reference (if you decide to start loading more demanding virtual machines in your systems) it is always best to host the virtual machines on a different disk than the host operating system. VM's can get disk intensive, and translating all of that information through the same drive as the host OS as well as the virtualization software can bog down a single disk pretty quick. A lot of times I've found it's faster to buy an external (even USB 2.0) hard drive and install the VM's on that. If you have support for it, pretty much any USB 3.0 external drive will work with this.

LaChupacabra wrote:

churin wrote:

I do not want to mess with the W7 system I am using now, so that I add an extra HD to the machine and carry out the experiment on it.

Got it. Just for your future reference (if you decide to start loading more demanding virtual machines in your systems) it is always best to host the virtual machines on a different disk than the host operating system. VM's can get disk intensive, and translating all of that information through the same drive as the host OS as well as the virtualization software can bog down a single disk pretty quick. A lot of times I've found it's faster to buy an external (even USB 2.0) hard drive and install the VM's on that. If you have support for it, pretty much any USB 3.0 external drive will work with this.

Except in the case of a busy (lots of I/O) case, my VM on the same SSD that my OS exists is working just comfy.

But if the OP is just playing with the OS lightly, it would not matter IMO.

Anyone playing with Win9x might find this list of compatible s/w useful:
http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/105936- ... dows-98se/

The last time I installed Windows 95 was on an AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1 Ghz system with 512 megs of ram. IIRC the installation speed was only limited by the speed of a 10x cd-rom drive. After installation, it booted up almost instantly. No USB support, but there was a special version of Windows 95 with USB support, but I've never seen a copy of it in person.

There was a USB supplement you could download for Win95b.

there was a 95C but I've never seen a copy. Plenty of patches to make 95 look and run like 98. IE 4 gives you the quicklaunch toolbar, and the plus pack gives you a bunch of themes.
http://www.mdgx.com/ for tweaks and patches. Plenty of unofficial patches like kernelEx and 98 revolutions.

I appreciate the links posted by bthtlafu and 133t-g4m3r for dirvers and softwares for Win95.

"Thunderbird" mentioned in moresmarterthanspock's post rings my bell. I have Thunderbird machine still around in the basement. The machine started out with XP, but I have just checked website of the motherboard vendor and found drivers for Win95 are still available.
I am presently leaning towards trying Win95 on this machine to refresh my memory about Win95. It is good to see Win95 operating natively on a hardware. Then, move on to the modern mobo, since I am also interested in virtual machine which I have never played with.

BTW: The Win95 I have is Win95B with USB support.

In case anyone was wondering about the morass of Win95 versions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_95#Editions

I like how "B" both had and didn't have USB support depending on what OSR you had.

l33t-g4m3r wrote:

there was a 95C but I've never seen a copy.

Pretty sure I still have a couple 2.5C discs somewhere. Once Win98 came out, the surplus 2.X disc+CoA kits started showing up for around $30 on Newegg.