The MDGx site has a good collection of both the official updates and unofficial patches (directly hosted and through links to other sources)... I don't know if it covers every last patch ever released, but it's probably everything you'd realistically need.

Old Thrashbarg wrote:

The MDGx site has a good collection of both the official updates and unofficial patches (directly hosted and through links to other sources)... I don't know if it covers every last patch ever released, but it's probably everything you'd realistically need.

Problem for me is, I'll need the Dutch versions 🙁

Yeah, that's definitely a problem. Most of the community support that still exists for Win95 is only for the English version... you could probably hunt down the localized versions of official updates individually, going by a list of the patch numbers, but not only would that suck to do, there's also a good chance you'd be completely outta luck on a lot of the unofficial fixes.

Most of the patches or unofficial service packs for Win95 are for OSR2. Some of them clearly don't work with the original version of Windows 95. That's the problem I've been running into like on MDGx's site.

I think this and the official service pack is about all there is for 95A.

But I'm curious, why not use OSR2? The reason all the unofficial stuff focuses around OSR2, is because OSR2 is considerably better to start with. If you're just doing it to avoid IE4, it was only the last OSR2.5 release that included the "Windows Desktop Update" with IE4... the other versions have IE3, which is still easy enough to remove completely if you so desire.

Honestly, the best upgrade for Win 95 is Win 98SE.

Unless you're using a 486 or slow Pentium. 😉 Win 95 B/C are much faster on such hardware.

I don't really bother updating 95. I just install it and go. I don't really care about security updates and whatnot because I'm only trying to play games. Sometimes I install IE 5.5 so I can get to Google without too many horrible errors. Web browsing on that kind of hardware is painful though so I keep it to a minimum.

I'd say security really isn't that big a concern on Win95 anyway... there isn't much malware left in the wild that will even work on Win9x. The only thing you really have to worry about is the odd bug lurking on an old floppy disk.

Stability updates are another matter, though...

As a side note, I use Opera 9 on Win95. It works pretty well, certainly not enough to make me give up my modern machine, but even on a lower-end Pentium I wouldn't call it painful. The adblocker helps the experience quite a bit.

I found that Opera was just about the only well known browser that still works on Win9x. I installed it on my PIII-550 last weekend.

I got Arachne working in FreeDOS 1.0, but it's painfully slow.

You can get Firefox 3.6 working on 98SE with KernelEX (along with Flash 10.1 and such)... it's a bit of a pain, but it works OK once you get it set up. But the options are considerably more limited with Win95. Opera 9 isn't bad, though... I actually kinda prefer it over Opera 10 anyway.

valnar wrote:

Most of the patches or unofficial service packs for Win95 are for OSR2. Some of them clearly don't work with the original version of Windows 95. That's the problem I've been running into like on MDGx's site.

I wrote MDGx and he pointed me to the correct link on his site with all the updates.

While it's totally unsupported, my only interest in Win95a (OSR1) is because is somewhat works within DOSBox. I've read that OSR2 & Win98 works less, and since it's only for Win95 games, there was no point in my trying anything above Win95a anyway.

I have it working now and patched up. My only interest in doing this is because of Voodoo integration in ykhwong's latest build. It's quite the curiosity. Things are very slow and unplayable, but its still cool to see Glide games emulated and working.

Old Thrashbarg wrote:

Stability updates are another matter, though..

I'd say that having stability in the same sentence as Win9x is a dangerous proposition. 😉

I didn't know Opera 9 works on 95. I use Opera 10 on 98SE all the time. I have to admit that I rarely touch 95 anymore though.

I was working on a ca 1998 iMac a few months back and was digging around for browsers for it. It was running some "old" version of OSX that has been sent to mothballs already. Opera 9 was the newest Opera that would work on it. It's fun to equate OSX to Win95. 🤣

I'd say that having stability in the same sentence as Win9x is a dangerous proposition.

That was kinda my point though. As dodgy as it may be when it's fully updated, it's worse if it hasn't been updated. Every little bit helps.

Old versions of OSX do indeed suck when it comes to browser options. 10.4 is still pretty well supported, as are OS 8.6 - 9.2 (considering the limitations therein), but the versions in between fall into a rather unfortunate gap.

Is there any advantage to using 95A over 95C? Just out of curiosity.... I know that it is missing some key things, like IDE DMA drivers, but that doesn't typically matter for 486 hardware.

swaaye wrote:

Unless you're using a 486 or slow Pentium. 😉 Win 95 B/C are much faster on such hardware.

You might as well use DOS or Win 3.1 on such a slow machine. Since you're probably not using such a pc for anything but playing games from that era anyway. Win 98SE can still be useful (in a limited way), but Win 95 really isn't. Win 95 is a tweener os with really limited uses. Not quite right for older apps, and not quite right for running newer ones.

Is there anything that will run in Win98SE but not Win95, that will also not run on a Vista/Win7?

olemogamer wrote:

You might as well use DOS or Win 3.1 on such a slow machine.

I hear you. Today there is little point in using 95 on a 486 considering what such hardware is capable of doing well. But I tend to put 95 on simply because I used it for over a year on my 486 machine. I played a zillion hours of Diablo that way. So it's the usual illogical nostalgic draw. 😀

By the same logic, I would say that it's not worthwhile using 95 at all. 98SE runs fine on a Pentium as long as you have 32MB of RAM or more.

I actually rarely use anything slower than a P3 anymore. The old stuff is losing its appeal over Dosbox. My 486 has had maybe an hour of use this entire year. It's just fussy hardware and it's slow and a real timesink. Dosbox does everything better IMO.

HunterZ wrote:

Is there anything that will run in Win98SE but not Win95

I'm pretty sure theres lots of games (and other programs) that have 98SE as a min req.

For actually playing games I totally agree with you.

I actually see playing with real hardware, testing, overclocking, recording music and videos and such things as a totally different hobby.

If you are all about the games, then DOSBox is definitely the way to go!