For 9x 137 and 138 UDP are used for name resolution if not using DNS. Port 139 TCP used for filesharing.
Ports 137 and 138 are still listening on newer Windows operating systems.
Port 139 is still used for file sharing on even the latest Windows operating systems for backwards compatibility but the security settings on the newer operating systems will prevent file sharing.
Netstat should work on 9x, try it and see.
WINS can still be used even on the latest Microsoft Operating systems and the WINS server on those operating systems are backwards compatible.
You don't need a WINS server on a home system unless you want it. A system in the same subnet will be the master browser and/or you can use a host file if you need to.
Any time I've done file sharing from an old OS to newer MS OS I've re-enabled SMB1, I haven't tried to disable SMB1 and try to still share files with these older operating systens. Even with SMB1 disabled port 139 will still be listening on the newer OS.

So yes, everything is available it's just that the newer OS either has SMB disabled or has the security settings set to not allow access. You can disable that security.....but you've left the system vulnerable unless you account for that with a firewall. It won't be too long before both Linux and Windows remove support entirely for SMB1, it hasn't happened yet but it's slowly occurring with Linux removing things and MS disabling things by default.

What I do is leave the client operating systems alone and re-enable SMB1 and the required settings on my TrueNAS server. I haven't bothered with using ACL w/ VLAN or air-gapped networks, if they can break past my pfsense and compromise my TrueNAS (based on FreeBSD) then they would likely be able to compromise anything else as well. Windows relies alot on SMB for functionality whereas Linux does not so it makes far more sense to do the filesharing on Linux vs Windows for <= SMB1.

Thanks. After using netstat I noticed the corresponding ports were open and this was true on both Win95 and Win11 machines. Then I tried nbtstat -A 192.168.x.x and could see computer name, user, and name of network on the Win95 machine. That's when I realized the two nodes were communicating over the network. So, I sought the folder made on the windows 11 machine and did not find it. So, I created a shared folder on the windows 95 machine and it could be accessed by the Win11 PC. Then I could send the CD-ROM. 508 MB at a rate of 130KB/s. I checked on the Win95 PC which now has the CD-ROM ISO.

I have a trueNAS server but I use a wireless access point to connect to it. I plan to start using a wireless bridge to get my Win95 PC and it's Ethernet card on the wireless lan.

Thanks for helping me with this puzzle.

Earliest PC I have is Windows For Workgroups 3.11, latest is Win10. Only protocol installed is TCP/IP (maybe IPX for some games but I don't bind this to file/print sharing) and am able to share files between all OS's
browsing doesn't really work but typing the ip eg \\192.168.1.1 will bring up the machine. Sometimes it only works one way like what your seeing but that's good enough for me.
Like dosfreak I simply enable smb1