Forget about Win95 on a 386 no matter the ram. The realistic minimum requirements would be a mid-end 486 with 32mb.

dirkmirk's 386 machine was apparently quite usable with win95 - on the desktop at least.

Thread here: http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t=906144 not sure if you need to register to see it. Page 5 is where he installs windows.

Vogons wrote:

Forget about Win95 on a 386 no matter the ram. The realistic minimum requirements would be a mid-end 486 with 32mb.

blabla, I'm running win98se on my 386... thanks to 32mb ram smoother than expected. win95 has much lower hardware requirements, so you are good to go with a 386 (but not with 4mb ram, though)

schlang wrote:

Vogons wrote:

Forget about Win95 on a 386 no matter the ram. The realistic minimum requirements would be a mid-end 486 with 32mb.

blabla, I'm running win98se on my 386... thanks to 32mb ram smoother than expected. win95 has much lower hardware requirements, so you are good to go with a 386 (but not with 4mb ram, though)

Being able to install it does not imply being able to boot it and being able to boot it does not imply it being able to use it.

The minimum CPU requirements for Win98 are a "486DX 66 megahertz (MHz) or faster processor (Pentium central processing unit recommended)" according to Microsoft, and when they say "minimum" you know it's going to run like crap.

Don't let your ass do the talking, Win98 on a 386, not a chance, nothing "smooth" about it with or without 32mb.

if you say so

Did you actually try?

As a beefed up Win 3.11 it needn't be that bad. Also a 2D accellerator probably helps a lot.

yes I have it running on my 386 (see sig). today I only use it to transfer data via its usb network adapter

I was addressing Vogons