AlaricD wrote:

SW-SSG wrote:

I've run Win98SE on a DX2-66 in the past. It was miserable!!! 95 was much better, but (as already mentioned) I would recommend the OSR2.x updated versions over the original release.

Win98 on a Ti486SXL-40/Cx387DX-40 with 16MB is truly miserable. I can't expect that even with the DX2-66 it was that much better (although the i486 cache is probably a lot better than the 8KB Ti486SXL cache). On the other hand, you probably had VLB graphics and perhaps with Windows acceleration.

16Mb of memory is too little for Windows 98SE even you keep the system tray empty. It may help to replace the explorer or use something like Midnight Commander, tune up vcache and install an IDE SSD or CF drive for reasonably fast swapping. The IBM 486SXL series and TI 486SXLC series make use of 16-bit system bus with 24-bit address bus, therefore they are limited to 16Mb of memory by design. It's a challenge to get Windows 98SE running there.

For the large disk support, it's not drastically important since my drives are limited to 8gb by the Landshine controller. However, I do like not having 4 or 5 drive partitions, especially since I have two drives. One drive is IDE, while the other is an SATA with an IDE adapter. What I decided to do was install Windows 95 OSR2.5 on one drive, and DOS 6.22 and Win 3.11 on the other. Then I'll just use Plop Boot Manager to switch between them. I haven't done much with it yet, but so far Windows 95 seems to be working just fine.

You typed the above same time I was typing mine which made what i said redundant 😜

If you dont want the multiple partitions, I agree Win95 is the best choice. really any windows on this will just be used for file management and networking anyway.
Have a play with Win 3.11 but its not really needed now. Booting into Win95's dos 7 is 100% compatible as far as dos gaming PC goes (in fact it has slightly better memory management then 6.22)

And if you find you really do prefer 3.11 it is possible to have a a Dos7/Win3.11 setup

Michellybells wrote:

For the large disk support, it's not drastically important since my drives are limited to 8gb by the Landshine controller. However, I do like not having 4 or 5 drive partitions, especially since I have two drives. One drive is IDE, while the other is an SATA with an IDE adapter. What I decided to do was install Windows 95 OSR2.5 on one drive, and DOS 6.22 and Win 3.11 on the other. Then I'll just use Plop Boot Manager to switch between them. I haven't done much with it yet, but so far Windows 95 seems to be working just fine.

If you have a network card in your computer, you can probably put a boot BIOS chip on it loaded with the XT-IDE software so you are no longer limited to 8gb hard drives.

I would say that it depends on how much memory and disk space you have in your 486.
Win98SE is considerably larger and more memory-hungry than Win95. For that reason, I run Win95 on my 486DX2-80 with 16 MB and a 500 MB drive.

AlaricD wrote:

SW-SSG wrote:

I've run Win98SE on a DX2-66 in the past. It was miserable!!! 95 was much better, but (as already mentioned) I would recommend the OSR2.x updated versions over the original release.

Win98 on a Ti486SXL-40/Cx387DX-40 with 16MB is truly miserable. I can't expect that even with the DX2-66 it was that much better (although the i486 cache is probably a lot better than the 8KB Ti486SXL cache). On the other hand, you probably had VLB graphics and perhaps with Windows acceleration.

'Twas actually with PCI graphics (Cirrus CL-GD5434; GUI acceleration going on for sure) on a late-era Asus PVI-486AP4 motherboard, IIRC with 32MB of FPM RAM. I can't remember how much L2 cache was installed; probably 128KB. Either way I just can't recommend it.

canthearu wrote:

If you have a network card in your computer, you can probably put a boot BIOS chip on it loaded with the XT-IDE software so you are no longer limited to 8gb hard drives.

This sounds like a good idea, though I do wonder if maybe it's easier to update the BIOS on the Longshine LCS-6941, since it uses Promise chips on it. I've read that if you update it, it has much better LBA support. I don't have an EEPROM programmer, and I'm not sure this NIC has a boot option, either. I'll have to check that out.

I do have a problem with Plop, though. I can load it from a floppy just fine, but whenever I try to install it to the MBR (on either drive) the system hangs when trying to boot. I was able to uninstall it and return to the original MBR, but booting Plop from floppy every time I turn on the computer isn't something I really want to do. Any suggestions?

Michellybells wrote:

I do have a problem with Plop, though. I can load it from a floppy just fine, but whenever I try to install it to the MBR (on either drive) the system hangs when trying to boot. I was able to uninstall it and return to the original MBR, but booting Plop from floppy every time I turn on the computer isn't something I really want to do. Any suggestions?

No need for 3rd party software.
Just install DOS/Win3.11 first then Win95 second selecting the option to keep the existing setup. Win95 will then give you the option to boot into the previous version of windows.

Just make sure the boot drive (c:\) is fat16

Would that replace DOS 6.22 with 7.0? Maybe it's crazy or pointless, but I'd like to keep DOS 6.22 for the best compatibility. Then again, maybe 7.0 is perfectly compatible with previous DOS software, I don't know. I never was quite sure on that point.

I have Windows-95c running on a 486dx-133 with 64mb ram and it runs very good.
should work well on a 486dx-66 too.

I have a Am486DX4-100 with 32Mb of RAM,

I run DOS 6.22 + WfW 3.11.

It will run Win95 okish but why?

We ran Win95 vanilla on a DX4-100 with 16MB RAM when I was a kid. I don't particularly remember it being slow, but that could be a combination of my young age and the fact that was the first "modern" computer my family ever owned, having had only an Apple II before then, thus I had no real concept of how fast it was supposed to go anyway. We did eventually upgrade it to Win98 FE, and even then I still don't recall it being much slower...but again, my young age at the time combined with the lack of knowing just how fast stuff was really supposed to run could have altered those experiences. Also, it had been upgraded to 64MB RAM and a 4GB hard drive right around the same time, which might have helped offset any slowness issues brought about by upgrading to Win98. I will say though, I do remember my brother trying to run Sim City 3000 on that system one day, and that did seem to run agonizingly slow.

I also recall the high school I went to still having a handful of DX2-66 (and even a few DX-33) systems running Win95 (unknown edition) in the late 90s, and even at my young inexperienced age I was able to observe how they were noticeably slower than our computer at home.

I got a system that is an "as close to exact" recreation of my family's old 486 circa late 1995, so it is currently running Win95 vanilla, but I admittedly haven't used it much. I might have to get back into doing so, to get a better experience of how slow it really is. I imagine a lot of the slowness with it is actually a combination of the video card and hard drive...Trident and Conner were never renowned for their performance, after all. 😜

Michellybells wrote:

Would that replace DOS 6.22 with 7.0? Maybe it's crazy or pointless, but I'd like to keep DOS 6.22 for the best compatibility. Then again, maybe 7.0 is perfectly compatible with previous DOS software, I don't know. I never was quite sure on that point.

Win95 will become the "master"? OS but though trickery somewhat similar to other boot loaders will allow you to boot into a Dos 6.22 as well
Is it crazy pointless? yes but experimenting is 1/2 the fun so give it a go if you want and decide for yourself.

Don't worry about compatibility, its 100% with dos games and programs excluding Disk management like Norton Utilities as they don't understand fat32, You'll need the updated Win9x versions you don't want to use the included dos 7 ones.

Really it comes down to this.
Dos 6.22 & Win 3.11
+ True nostalga,
+ Fast on a DX2/66
- Fat16, Limited to 2GB partitions

Dos7 & Win3.11
+ Fat32
+ Fast on a DX2/66
+ Better memory management then 6.22
- Not officially supported

Win95
+ Fat32
+ Better memory management then 6.22
+ Arguably more useful version of Windows
- Slower

Dos6/Win95 duel boot.
+ Best of both worlds
- Added complexity of 2 OS's
- Technically one OS is complete redundant.

As your just starting out, I recommend trying both OS's and deciding what suits YOU best and kill off the other

chinny22 wrote:

- Technically one OS is complete redundant.

That is not my experience.
I had trouble with DOS 7 as a true replacement of DOS 6.22, because it is much more memory-hungry (it includes a lot of extra APIs for interop with Windows 9x).
As long as you can use EMM386 and HIMEM.SYS, you can hide the extra overhead in UMBs. But EMM386 puts the CPU in v86 mode to achieve its magic, and there's quite a lot of DOS software that doesn't allow the CPU to be in v86 mode (like early DOS extenders). Performance in v86 mode is also worse, because some hardware is virtualized.
So when not loading EMM386, you had considerably less conventional memory free in DOS 7, which prevented some software from running.

So my 486 was a dualboot with DOS 6.22 and Win95b, and I used DOS 6.22 for all my true DOS needs.

Scali wrote:

That is not my experience. I had trouble with DOS 7 as a true replacement of DOS 6.22, because it is much more memory-hungry (it […]
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chinny22 wrote:

- Technically one OS is complete redundant.

That is not my experience.
I had trouble with DOS 7 as a true replacement of DOS 6.22, because it is much more memory-hungry (it includes a lot of extra APIs for interop with Windows 9x).
As long as you can use EMM386 and HIMEM.SYS, you can hide the extra overhead in UMBs. But EMM386 puts the CPU in v86 mode to achieve its magic, and there's quite a lot of DOS software that doesn't allow the CPU to be in v86 mode (like early DOS extenders). Performance in v86 mode is also worse, because some hardware is virtualized.
So when not loading EMM386, you had considerably less conventional memory free in DOS 7, which prevented some software from running.

So my 486 was a dualboot with DOS 6.22 and Win95b, and I used DOS 6.22 for all my true DOS needs.

So what does Win95 do that you couldn't do in say 3.11? Genuine question not trying to pick a fight 😀

chinny22 wrote:

So what does Win95 do that you couldn't do in say 3.11? Genuine question not trying to pick a fight 😀

Is that even a question?
Win9x was the first version of Windows with DirectX, putting Windows gaming on the map.
One of the first games I played under Windows 95 was Need for Speed SE.
Windows also offers 3D acceleration through OpenGL, for early VooDoos and such (GLQuake, Unreal etc).

I've been running Win95c on a 50 MHz DX2 (mobile) with 20 Mb of RAM and it was just fine imho -- it's not the fastest experience in the world but totally acceptable. I upgraded to a 75 MHz DX4 recently and now those few slowdowns that did occur before have basically gone.

Scali wrote:

Is that even a question? Win9x was the first version of Windows with DirectX, putting Windows gaming on the map. One of the firs […]
Show full quote

chinny22 wrote:

So what does Win95 do that you couldn't do in say 3.11? Genuine question not trying to pick a fight 😀

Is that even a question?
Win9x was the first version of Windows with DirectX, putting Windows gaming on the map.
One of the first games I played under Windows 95 was Need for Speed SE.
Windows also offers 3D acceleration through OpenGL, for early VooDoos and such (GLQuake, Unreal etc).

I think for a 486 which is what we are discussing its a valid question.
And while I personally wouldn't want to run any of those games on a DX2/66 you have provided a valid answer and example when you may want to run both. (if loading EMM386 is not an option)

chinny22 wrote:

And while I personally wouldn't want to run any of those games on a DX2/66

Well, faster is always better I suppose...
Nevertheless, Quake's poor reputation on 486es is mainly because of the Pentium-specific FPU optimizations in its software renderer.
You can get a pretty playable experience on a 486 with GLQuake:
A brief comparison of Voodoo-Quake results on a 486
I wonder how well a DX2-66 would do. Might be bus-limited, not so much CPU-limited.

I think the main reason of Win 9x of sluggishness on 486s is I/O speed, not CPU itself. Can be compensated with flash HDD and/or good PCI IDE card.