Windows 95 or 98 for MS-DOS Games

[Sandi1987]

Which is better for MS-DOS games?

[leileilol]

Either one's fine, though 98se gets less BSODs.

[Arctic]

When I upgraded from Windows 95 to Windows 98, I think some games didn't work anymore.

[DosFreak]

Both as long as Windows isn't booted.

[Jorpho]

In theory, Windows 98 has some sort of Sound Blaster emulation built-in while Windows 95 does not. The specifics are ambiguous.

[Sandi1987]

USB works in Windows 95?

[leileilol]

Only in the later OSR2 releases and even then it's a huge YMMV.

[Sandi1987]

ATI Radeon 9600XT support Windows 95?

[leileilol]

No DX9-reliant card supports Windows 95.

[oeuvre]

USB works in Windows 95?

You can get it to work pretty well in 95B/95C. Install usbsupp.exe, restart, install your USB chipset driver, restart, then you can use this driver if you want to use flash drives in 95. Have done this on several different machines ranging from Socket 7s to Pentium II and III builds and got it to work on all of them. http://toastytech.com/files/cruzerwin95.html

[mrau]

Both as long as Windows isn't booted.

epic "i like you, as long as you sit in an inescapable jail cell in the middle of sahara without water"

is it just me or did one of the windows versions have a rather low amount of conventional memory for DOS programs to share?

[Jorpho]

is it just me or did one of the windows versions have a rather low amount of conventional memory for DOS programs to share?

There was a bug in non-English versions of Windows 95B, but that is easily fixed.
http://www.mdgx.com/osr2.htm#IOFIX

[mrau]

is it just me or did one of the windows versions have a rather low amount of conventional memory for DOS programs to share?

There was a bug in non-English versions of Windows 95B, but that is easily fixed.
http://www.mdgx.com/osr2.htm#IOFIX

sometimes its freaky what ancient stuff you guys know just from the top of your beautiful eggshaped heads

i remmeber os/2 was actually just the contrary of this - the reached theoretical free memory of 700kb+; no idea if programs really could use that though;

[FFXIhealer]

Both as long as Windows isn't booted.

epic "i like you, as long as you sit in an inescapable jail cell in the middle of sahara without water"

is it just me or did one of the windows versions have a rather low amount of conventional memory for DOS programs to share?

I installed Windows 95 OSR2 onto a 200MHz Pentium system and when I restart in MS-DOS mode, DOS was using 135KB of conventional memory out of a total of 640KB. Duke Nukem 2 refused to run without at least 540KB. So I had to teach myself how to configure DOS properly for high memory, since I actually have 40MB of Extended Memory (XMS).

I had to make my CONFIG.SYS file says this:

DEVICE=C:\Windows\himem.sys
DEVICE=C:\Windows\EMM386.exe NOEMS I=B000-B7FF
DEVICEHIGH=(location of CD-ROM driver) /D:MSCD001 /P:170,15 /L:US
DOS=HIGH,UMB
NUMLOCK=ON

I also put these lines into my C:\Windows\Dosstart.bat file:

LH C:\WINDOWS\CTCM
LH C:\mscdex.exe /D:mscd001 /l:D
LH C:\Windows\Command\mouse.com

What this did is configure a small amount of XMS to be used by DOS and then pushed DOS, CD-ROM, and Mouse drivers to run from the High Memory block reserved by Emm386.exe. After these files, now DOS is only using about 19KB of Conventional Memory. Out of 640KB, that gives me 620KB free - more than enough for Duke Nukem 2. All my other DOS programs are already configured to use available XMS memory and don't need EMM386.exe, but in order to push the Mouse and CD-ROM drivers and to have DOS itself run from upper memory, I had to use it. And it won't work without HIMEM.SYS first. Once those two are assigned, you can start pushing stuff high (DEVICEHIGH for Config.sys and LH in Autoexec.bat).

[Gemini000]

98 is better and more stable overall than 95 and so long as you leave the HD formatted to the original FAT format instead of FAT32, you're able to reboot into previous versions of MS-DOS, provided you have such a version to supply yourself.

If FAT isn't an option, or the CPU of the system is powerful enough, you can also elect to just run DOSBox from within Windows 9x. It does indeed work perfectly fine, though with my old setup I could never get OpenGL rendering support working. (DirectDraw worked fine.)

[jesolo]

FFXIhealer - you can refer to this post about how to also set up a start menu configuration under Windows 9x, thereby allowing you to boot straight into MS-DOS as well:
viewtopic.php?f=46&t=47863&hilit=start+menu

[Jade Falcon]

No DX9-reliant card supports Windows 95.

DX9 cards work in 95, but DX9 does not. I used GF6xxx cards on 95 before.

[jade_angel]

In general, I'd say if your primary use case is MS-DOS games, then 98se on a 486DX(DX2,DX4,5x86) or later, and 95c on a 486 with <64MB or any 386 or 486SX. On a 386 I'd actually go with straight {MS,PC,DR}-DOS, maybe dual-booting with Win95 or OS/2 if you really want/need it.

[ynari]

is it just me or did one of the windows versions have a rather low amount of conventional memory for DOS programs to share?

There was a bug in non-English versions of Windows 95B, but that is easily fixed.
http://www.mdgx.com/osr2.htm#IOFIX

sometimes its freaky what ancient stuff you guys know just from the top of your beautiful eggshaped heads

i remmeber os/2 was actually just the contrary of this - the reached theoretical free memory of 700kb+; no idea if programs really could use that though;

OS/2's DOS compatibility included IBM DOS, almost identical to MSDOS (you could boot a VDM with any real mode OS of your choice if you wished..). The ability to tweak was excellent, and the amount of conventional memory by default was pretty high.

However, the 700Kb+ conventional memory was only reached by using bits of memory normally reserved for graphics, the same as could be achieved in real DOS. OS/2 was pretty awesome, but it can't break the physical limits of segmented real mode memory on the x86.

[jarreboum]

Wouldn't be 98lite (Windows 98 with the shell from 95) the best of both world? Support for more hardware without the iexplore integration?