Win98 will run on that, but I don't imagine it'd be much fun. Especially 98SE.

Personally I don't much care for 9x on 486es at all, but 95 OSR2 & OSR2.5 "should" give you a tolerable experience with 32MB RAM and a decent video card. Both support FAT32 and have a lot of improvements over original 95. I have OSR2 on a 5x86/100 Thinkpad with 24MB and it does alright.

If you really want 98SE, you can use 98lite to pare down the IE integration crap or even swap the whole shell to the 95 version.

DX2-66 is literally the minimum requirement for Win98. So I wouldn’t recommend that.

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.

Windows 9x gaming on a 486 sounds painful . I ran a 160MHz AMD 486 under Windows 95 (before I got a Pentium ) and found it adequate for office work, but would not have thought of gaming on it other than in DOS . It took a while for Windows gaming to become a thing and by that time a 486 at 66MHz would have been considered quite obsolete .

Well ok, I probably won't use it for 95 games then. I have a Pentium 2 with a SB16 that can do all that, though I do need to find a graphics card for it. I guess for the 486, I'd like to use it for dialup and email, though I do have other computers I can do that with as well. Is there any Windows 3.1 (or 95) email software that will still work with modern email servers?

I have a Compaq LTE 4/75CX that does quite well with windows 95. It does run at 75 MHz rather than 66, but it wasn't like it struggled at all. 98, however, is a totally different story. Just don't go there. What types of games are you looking to play on the computer?

Honestly it'll probably be just DOS games or stuff like Myst. I have two hard drives that are currently capped by the BIOS at 8gb, and I plan to use Plop to dual boot DOS/Win3.11 from one drive and Win95 or 98 on the other. I might do some stuff like Oregon Trail and SimCity 2000, but those will run in 3.11. I'd like to do Age of Empires, but that's probably out on 486.

Windows 9x gaming on a 486 sounds painful

HoMM2, Command & Conquer Red Alert, Diablo, Theme Hospital, Warcraft II Battle.net, Civilisation II will work quite fine on DX4.

I'd like to do Age of Empires, but that's probably out on 486.

Possible on overclocked Am 5x86.

I don't know much about Myst, but a quick google search reveals the system requirements for the original version as such:
Windows

· Processor: 386/33 MHz
· Operating System: Windows 3.1 or Windows 95*
· Hard Disk: 4 MB free hard disk space
· RAM: 4 MB
· CD ROM: 2X
· Video: 640x480, 256 Colors
· Sound: Windows Compatible
*Note: The original version of Myst will not run on Windows 98, ME, or 2000.

As far as I can tell, a 486 66 MHz should be able to run that fine IMHO. I have no experience with Myst, though, so I could be wrong.

Age of empires on the other hand...
Pentium 90 processor or faster (P-133+ for 1024 x 768 resolution)
SVGA with 1 MB RAM
fast 2D graphics card (2 MB required for 1024 x 768)
16 MB RAM
Win 95 or Win NT 4.0 with Service Pack 3
80+ MB HD space (together with the swap file, it's up to 150 MB)
50 MB HD space for swap file (you might have to adjust the settings in the control panel)
Double speed CD-ROM (quad speed recommended)

yeah... nope.exe

I'm not sure Windows 95 would bring anything to the table for a 66MHz 486. I was running a DX4-100 in 1995 when Windows 95 got released, and my experience with OS/2 Warp 3 was far better than the experiences of many friends who jumped ship to Windows 95 immediately with their 486s, especially DX2s. If possible stick to WfWG 3.11 instead.

Windows 98SE will run just as good as Windows 95 if you remove the Internet Explorer. Either with 98lite or manually by replacing a few files with those from Windows 95. 32Mb of RAM is fine with some swapping. People used to have 16Mb on average in the mid-1990's.

dkarguth wrote:

I don't know much about Myst, but a quick google search reveals the system requirements for the original version as such

Myst is positively ancient compared to Windows 95; if Windows 95 runs, Myst will run. That makes it a quite bad guide to minimum specs. Pretty much any other Windows game will be more demanding.

Slow(without the lite "hack"), but with 32MB ram and the right entry regarding "vcache" it's ok.

I am using an unisys CDW486 with a DX2/66 32MB Ram (no extra cpu-cache). I have 2x2GB CF-Cards installed in it.
The partitiontable looks like this: (Quadboot)
2GB:
- 512MB P FAT16 Msdos6 (Boot)
- 512MB P NTFS WinNT351 (Boot)
- 512MB P FAT16 Win95A (Boot)
- 512MB P NTFS OS2/Warp3 (Boot)

2GB:
- 2GB P FAT16 Data

All I can tell is that Win95a is fast enough for me and does not require too much space on the harddisk.
Though it has some dll-problems. (I cant get Gamebase working on that, whether 1.1 or later ones).
I have deactivated the swapping in oder not to kill the CF-card.

Doc

Honestly I'd skip 9x altogether and just do DOS 6.22 + WfW 3.11

Win95 OSR 2 works fine on a 486-66mhz. It was fairly common to see windows 95 on these sorts of 486's back in the day.

OSR2 is good because you can create partitions greater than 2GB. (although scandisk is pretty slow on a 120gb FAT32 partition on a 486 DX2-66)-

In my opinion greater 2GB is useless on dx2/66. there are only a view win-games that do work on that setup. win95a is much smaller but has the same advantages for network-sharing/using. I am at the point of the 8bitGuy that mentioned why he uses WIn95 on lot's of old machines.

dr.zeissler wrote:

In my opinion greater 2GB is useless on dx2/66. there are only a view win-games that do work on that setup. win95a is much small but has the same advantages for network-sharing/using. I am at the point of the 8bitGuy that mentioned why he uses WIn95 on lot's of old machines.

For people with lots of older working drives in the 100mb - 4gb region that don't mind how mindbogglingly noisy and slow these drives are, and don't have lots of software to put on them, then sure, limited 2gb partitions are not a problem.

However, if you want to use a more modern, quieter IDE drive, or simply don't have access to these older drives in working condition, or have too much to put on the hard drive, then 2GB partitions are a real limitation. If you are putting a 20-100gb drive in your 486, then the extra space windows 95b uses doesn't matter at all, and it isn't any slower or problematic than win95a. If you are using a small drive, either for period correctness or some other reason, then you won't need 2gb partitions and win95a is fine.

With windows 3.1 or DOS only systems, I have to move away from SMB/windows file sharing, and use FTP. mtcp's FTP works nicely once correctly configured.

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.