If you already have Win95 running of a Pentium MMX, not much point to run it on the P75.

I would only install Windows 3.1 if you have a specific need or want for using it.

95 all the way. P75 cpus were abundant among the masses' first exposure to Win95.

leileilol wrote on 2023-03-16, 22:18:

95 all the way. P75 cpus were abundant among the masses' first exposure to Win95.

DX4s and Am5x86es too. The OP could always run Win95 OSR2.x on the Pentium MMX and the "original" (FAT16) Win95 on the Pentium 75

leileilol wrote on 2023-03-16, 22:18:

95 all the way. P75 cpus were abundant among the masses' first exposure to Win95.

Win3.11 if any Windows at all.

Yes, P75 was abundant among the masses' first exposure to Win95 and the experience was pretty awful. Much of that was due to insufficient RAM (the then common 8MB really was not enough), but even with enough RAM, things are not as responsive as they should be.

If OP already has a Pentium MMX with Win95, installing it on this machine adds nothing more than an illustration of how it runs less responsively on slower hardware. If he's running DOS games anyway, stick to DOS, and if any point&click is needed, add the Win3.11 shell.

Not much sense in another slower Win9x machine. Win 3.1x is occasionally interesting and simple to keep out of the way.

I mean, I’m running windows 95 on a high end 386 class setup… so go for 95 and enjoy 😀

If you already have a separate 95 machine then put DOS and Windows 3.1 on that thing, but imo it doesn't make much sense to have two virtually identical machines with only a higher clock speed and MMX for one, running different operating systems. Is there anything else about the MMX build that makes it 95-worthy? A 3D accelerator? If I were you I'd spread them out a little more if you're going to have two builds at all. Trick the MMX out for Windows and give the DOS build the ultimate DOS components.

i run win95 rtm on a pentium 75 laptop with 40mb ram and no pci bus. it's pretty responsive. i don't notice a whole lot of difference between it and an athlon 1.8ghz system running win98se.

Pretty much what everyone has already said.
For system management like unzipping, copying files, etc Win95 is nicer to use.
But if you want something different then 3x is fine, in fact its about the only reason to install it as unlike Win95 not many games make use of 3x

Minus nostalgia goggles, go with DOS. Adding Windows 3.x is generally more work, more unneeded fiddling around, and more things to go wrong without the requisite benefits.

If you would like to relive Windows 3.x for a few minutes on your other 95 machine, run PROGMAN.EXE, or swap out the Explorer shell with Program manager shell in Windows 95 system.ini to make it a more permanent feature.

File Manager is also available.

If you are going to use exclusively DOS, then I’d install DOS and Win3.x depending if it is actually needed. 95 would be just unnecessary bloat on that kind of system.

95 feels more "correct" but since you already have such a machine I say go for 3.1. It should fly on that CPU.

I would go with pure dos and play around with some of the many third party shells available, most of which are far nicer than the abysmal win3.1 experience.

The Pentium 75 is a downclocked 90 or 100 MHz Pentium and also very slow, because the FSB runs only with 50 MHz and 25Mhz PCI. I would clock this CPU to 100 MHz for a 66MHz FSB. Every later produced 75Mhz Pentium should run with 100 MHz.

I was running OS/2 Warp 3 on my old Pentium 75 back then.
It had a PAS16 soundcard installed, on-board VGA (S3 or Cirrus?), a Sony SCSI CD-ROM (via PAS16)..

OS/2 can coexist with existing MS-DOS, too. The BOOT /OS2 and BOOT /DOS command can help.

Also, ODIN can run on Warp 3, giving access to Win 95 applications.
http://www.os2site.com/sw/emulators/odin/w3odin.html

OS/2 had a few interesting games, like SIM CITY.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqlTPrwmGnU

Or Power MOD, a MOD player that rivaled MOD4WIN in visual terms..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-0o-0kkWKo

It also can be used to run POVRay..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZEcFNeYfbo

Edit: This video (OS/2 Warp Version 3 - In Depth demo) is also interesting..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grU-5QNtZf8

Depends of the HDD size...

> 2 GB - FAT32 pretty much necessary, therefore Windows 95 OSR2
528 MB .. 2 GB - FAT32 not necessary, but nice to have due to smaller allocation units
< 528 MB - FAT16 only, and DOS+Windows 3.1x occupy less space

^That's also a good point indeed!
OS/2 Warp had good HPFS support, I remember.
Partitions with a few GBs should be possible, depending on Fixpack level and AT BIOS.

https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.os2.misc/c/rWQD8Znu0Mg

https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.ms-window … c/c/7wAYNeBUgTU

There are 3rd party tools to defragment HPFS or use it from DOS..
https://hobbes.nmsu.edu/?path=%2Fpub%2Fdos

I run Win95 on my Cyrix 5x86 with 32MB of ram. I do have 3.1 on another drive that I used to use with this PC, but other than for nostalgia I found it to be pretty finicky and pointless.
I see no reason why you shouldn't run Win95 with a true blue Pentium, even in you are in DOS 90% of the time.

Grzyb wrote on 2023-03-17, 13:16:

Depends of the HDD size... […]
Show full quote

Depends of the HDD size...

> 2 GB - FAT32 pretty much necessary, therefore Windows 95 OSR2
528 MB .. 2 GB - FAT32 not necessary, but nice to have due to smaller allocation units
< 528 MB - FAT16 only, and DOS+Windows 3.1x occupy less space

This is just what I've done for my Pentium-MMX 233MHz by swapping CF/SD cards for different systems (namely, Win98SE and DOS/Win31). IMHO Win95 is more like an interim OS: nice to have but not necessary for games and applications (same goes for WinME and Win8/8.1).

Running DOS/Win31 on a P233 + 64MB RAM (largest cacheable RAM on a 430TX chipset) + 512MB CF can be blazing fast (and can cause problems for some DOS games), but I can turn off L1 (internal) cache to slow it down to the level of a 486-33, or both L1 and L2 caches to emulate 386-40, if necessary.