oeuvre wrote:

GigAHerZ wrote:

I've run Windows 95 on 386SX 20MHz, 8MB ram and some random 512k videocard on a 99MB HDD.

It was awfully slow, but it worked.

So how big of a masochist are you?

I wanted a null-modem serial/parallel cable to be used to mount network drive from another computer and i didn't have any knowledge other than windows 95 did it. (Mounted a network drive over COM/LPT cable) This way i had all the games, that were in the pentium machine in the other room, at my fingertips. (Played them directly over the cable)
Norton Commander was also able to link 2 computers, but it basically only supported tranferring files.

It was maybe 20 years ago or so as a kid. We didn't have resources to have latest computers with NIC cards or anything like that. Completely self made serial and parallel cables and very old computers that were given away almost for free. (10€ max in today's money without counting inflation)

Good times... still remember how i played Warcraft 2 and Doom 2 over the serial cable and wondered, what difference does a "baud rate" do... 😁 (It always just worked...)

That 386 was kind of amazing pc. It pretty much did everything i threw at it, the question was only about the speed. (or lack of 😁 )

After using the Thinkpad 365CD (5x86 100MHz, 24 MB RAM) with Windows 95 for a while, I think I've decided that, unless I can get Win95 to squeeze into less RAM at idle, it might be better to stick with Windows 3.1.

The reason for this? While Win95 works fine when you first load it, even for browsing the web with Netscape, after you open MS Office 97, if your document gets any longer than a few pages it starts delving into the swapfile and the system responsiveness goes to crap. Using WordPad mitigates this, but I don't really want to have to do that...

I have it dual booting with DOS/Win31. In Windows 3.1, yes, it's definitely not as stable, but everything works and it doesn't run out of memory when using larger Office documents (this is Office 4.3, of course). Maybe if I installed a previous version of Office on Win95, it would work better, but I wanted Office 97 for the modern .doc file compatibility.

This machine really *should* have more than 24 MB of RAM. It'd do well with 32 or maybe 40 megs - but I cannot upgrade it; it won't accept a larger RAM stick than 16 MB!! (there is a switch on the RAM board to select the size of the stick you've put in it. I got the correct type of RAM in a 32 MB stick, but there's no way to select 32 MB, and the system refuses to boot).

@keenmaster486,
With windows 95, did you have all the basic configuration done like ConservativeSwapFileUsage=1 and other stuff like that?

Yep, I did all of that, and locked vcache to 1024KB. It uses about 9 MB at idle, and doesn't seem to want more memory over time, but Office 97 just wants a lot of memory!

everyone should still be using Office 97

First i did try win 95 on my 386dx40 8megs of ram 1mb Cirrus Logic vga card and 220mb hdd, as i remember it wasn't that slow, i was able to run stuff on it. 23 years later I was able to rebuild my old pc, I will install win 95 on it to see how it is.

Doggy wrote on 2020-10-10, 17:59:

First i did try win 95 on my 386dx40 8megs of ram 1mb Cirrus Logic vga card and 220mb hdd, as i remember it wasn't that slow, i was able to run stuff on it. 23 years later I was able to rebuild my old pc, I will install win 95 on it to see how it is.

Good luck! 👍

PS: My father was a programmer at the time.
He ran Win95 RTM on a maxed out 386DX40, too, but with 16MB of SIMM and an appropriate amount of cache, Trident VGA, 20" VGA, 2 HDDs, 2 floppy drives, Mitsumi Lu005, an SCSI streamer, chip card reader, hp deskjet, handy scanner and an 14k4 or 28k8 bps Fax modem.
This configuration served him well for years to come. He did his homebanking on this PC, wrote letters, printed his business cards etc..

Edit: Oh, already replied on page one! 😅
Anyway. Twice lasts better, haha.

I ran Windows 95 for a few years (1997-ish to end of 1998) on a 386DX 33 with 20mb ram. It was working okay, even with Office 95 that I used a lot for school work and other projects. I remember writing a few simple programs in Visual Basic, unsure what version I ran on it.

The computer was more or less a maxed out 386DX. 20mb ram, 528mb hard drive, SB32 (CT3670, still in use today), 3,5 and 5,25" floppy, 3Com 509B.

I think it only had 8mb when I first installed Windows 95 but it was upgraded to 20mb while I had it between early 1996 and Christmas 1998. It was slow when I got it... but it was mine 😀