For the games you'll want to play on such a computer 95 will certainly do the trick. 98 just had some bugfixes and was overall more refined etc. If you had 95 back in the day you could install it just for nostalgia's sake. I'm just not sure how OSR2 will handle PII CPUs, perhaps there is a patch...?

Ya this is all for nostalgia, guess I am starting early at 27. It all most has to be 95, that is what I ran back then that's what the PC came with. Found memory's or playing hoover and watching good times vid. 😁

I have win 95 on a newer K6-2+ rig and it works fine,i had to install a amd k6 patch,only thing i didn't manage to make it work,it's the usb,but from what i read usb on win 95 on ali alladin 5 chipset it's 50% chance of succes.On windows 98 usb works fine.
Regarding games,so far all games i installed,run without problems,even dos ones.
Also win 95 has limited usb support so prolly u won't be able to use usb sticks.Even for windows 98 u need some special drivers for sticks to work.

95 was used with early PII systems. These usually lacked USB and definitely AGP.

USB is barely usable with 95. Not many companies supported their USB devices under 95. AGP was also first supported in 95 OSR2 via the USB supplement (as strange as that sounds).

Really you should just go with Win98SE unless this is a Pentium II without USB or AGP.

Once u install usb supplement agp works just fine,tried a 3dfx banshee agp and now voodoo 3 2000 agp they both work.

I'm quite happy with W95 after updating as follows:

Unofficial Service Pack v105 [maybe there's a more recent one]
Dx8.0a
IE4/IE5/Desktop Update [improves the interface more like W98]
USB Supplement/USB Update/USB Flash Drive update [gets USB 1.1 running]

I've had no success getting any USB2 card to work. For practical purposes this just means much slower backup to external USB drives unless I pull the drive and perform the backup on a faster rig. For normal data transfer a flash drive works fine.

W95 supports some of the finicky early Windows era games better and I ended up using it on 2 of my 3 retro rigs. The 3rd gets W98SE with the Unofficial SP's and the IE updates/nusb33 to get USB2 on a NEC based card.

Yes AGP works fine with the USB supplement installed.

I don't bother with updates/tweaks/customizations much. I run 98SE stock almost without exception. If I am for some reason using a <200 MHz CPU, then I might go 95 OSR2.

Is that a stable proven release with official Microsoft updates, I at one time tried some flavor of a unofficial service pack and ended up needing to reformat the PC.

tincup wrote:

I'm quite happy with W95 after updating as follows: Unofficial Service Pack v105

bigskymusiclover wrote:

Is that a stable proven release with official Microsoft updates, I at one time tried some flavor of a unofficial service pack and ended up needing to reformat the PC.

Well, there's a good reason not to use Windows 95, I'd say. The unofficial 98 service packs have probably undergone more testing.

You can probably save yourself some trouble by imaging the hard drive before experimenting with service packs; that way, it is much easier to roll back the changes instead of reformatting and reinstalling from scratch.

I'd just go ahead and install Win98se along with one of the unofficial service packs... There's really no need to use Win95 imo (unless your using a 386/486 or early Pentium).

Well, there's a good reason not to use Windows 95, I'd say. The unofficial 98 service packs have probably undergone more testing.

One report of somebody having some issue with some version of some service pack is not exactly what I'd call a good reason to avoid Win95. The OSR2 USP 1.05 is quite stable, at least by Win9x standards. It's not actively developed anymore, but that's mainly because it hasn't really needed any further development.

As for the Win98 packs, the 98FE one is pretty mature and stable, and the old 98SE one developed by Gape is alright... i.e., the one up to 3.0 beta 4. But there are also newer versions of the 98SE pack, which, despite carrying the same name and following the same version structure, are actually developed by someone diffferent... he picked up the old abandoned project and started "updating" it, and he made a fucking mess of it.

I would use a Win95 flavour on it. Preferably Win95c.

bigskymusiclover wrote:

Is that a stable proven release with official Microsoft updates, I at one time tried some flavor of a unofficial service pack and ended up needing to reformat the PC.

tincup wrote:

I'm quite happy with W95 after updating as follows: Unofficial Service Pack v105

Sure, or I woudn't be happy! I've had identical W95 setups on 2 rigs going for over a year now with now complaints. Surprisingly so given how buggy/unstable I remember the OS being back in the day.

The fit and feel improves noticeably after Desktop Update which makes Explorer navigation much more like W98.

I have no issue trying these SP's - visit the site and read what goes into them. Mostly collections of official updates and consensus performance tweaks.

But these are just retro game rigs not everyday workhorses so your millage may vary.

EDIT: regarding reformatting, if you install an image program [like Acronis 8 which works well with W95] first thing after a fresh install [before mobo drivers etc.], back up the fresh install, then make further images as drivers/configs/tweaks are added - AND - keep all data/games off C:, then restoring a minty fresh C: only takes a few minutes if you run into problems. This MO has been mentioned many times before and is a real boon as you can experiment with much less 'fear and trepidation' of a major re-installation.

If you have enough CF cards or HDDs lying around I would try both, check out the games under both and note down any findings. Does anything not work on either, that kind of knowledge is always worth gold...

I'm doing the same for DOS games with 7.1 vs. 6.22 and so far haven't run into anything that doesn't work in 7.1. And FAT32 is definitely worth having!

Nahkri wrote:

Once u install usb supplement agp works just fine,tried a 3dfx banshee agp and now voodoo 3 2000 agp they both work.

3dfx chips don't use any AGP features, they basically treat AGP like 66MHz PCI. A better test would be an nVidia card of that era.

The system in question use's a STB Velocity 128, that is based off a RIVA 128 if I am not mistaken, I am not sure what version of drivers I am using or DX version.

Can I use RIVA 128 drivers for an STB card? What's the lastest version of DX I can put on 95, and any leads on were to get it?

idspispopd wrote:

3dfx chips don't use any AGP features, they basically treat AGP like 66MHz PCI. A better test would be an nVidia card of that era.

Yes generic nvidia drivers for riva 128 should work http://www.nvidia.com/object/riva_drivers.html
As for directx ,acording to wikipedia last version with windows 95 support is 8.0a u can get it here http://www.oldversion.com/windows/directx-8-0a
Info about how to get usb to work on windows 95 http://www.usbman.com/Win95%20USB%20Guide.htm

Use Windows 98SE. This system is far more powerful than anything that would benefit from Windows 95, and the benefits of Windows 98SE far outweigh the drawbacks in my opinion. I had an ancient Pentium 1 non-MMX 133 Mhz laptop with just 24 MB RAM with Windows 98SE and it run Diablo, Age of Empires: Rise of Rome, Transport Tycoon, Duke Nukem 3D, Doom and Wolfenstein 3D perfectly.

Win98SE gets my vote.