I think Windows 95 would be a good fit for the Pentium 200, especially if you already have several other Win98 systems. Windows 95 is lighter than 98 and has a simpler/faster Explorer depending on which OSR level you install. It's also fun to experiment with and collect some patches, tools, and utilities for 95. Windows 95 should also fly on the P200 and give a nice snappy experience. Worst case if you don't enjoy it, you could always upgrade to 98. :)

I ran Windows 98 on my Pentium 200 MMX box (an HP Vectra VL5), and it worked well enough but did feel a little sluggish. It gave a nice retro family computer vibe, like if a family bought this P200 MMX with 95 and upgraded it to 98 back in the day and it was a little slower but still usable. IIRC I got GTA2 and Starcraft running well on it with an ATI Rage PCI card.

Windows 95 would be what you used with a Pentium 200 at that time. I would only use Windows 98 on a K6-2 / Pentium II. I also don't think that a Pentium 200 is boring. Pentium 90 and Pentium 133 were for the peasants, that was what people could afford. Pentium 200 was for rich people. Playing games in software mode and having the luxury to crank up the resolution. And the Pentium MMX might be faster, but it was also more mainstream because it was sold in a lot of cheaper prebuilt computers at the end of its lifecycle. I have a MMX 200 and I think it is really boring, never used it for anything.

asdf53 wrote on 2024-03-11, 19:57:

Windows 95 would be what you used with a Pentium 200 at that time. I would only use Windows 98 on a K6-2 / Pentium II. I also don't think that a Pentium 200 is boring. Pentium 90 and Pentium 133 were for the peasants, that was what people could afford. Pentium 200 was for rich people. Playing games in software mode and having the luxury to crank up the resolution. And the Pentium MMX might be faster, but it was also more mainstream because it was sold in a lot of cheaper prebuilt computers at the end of its lifecycle. I have a MMX 200 and I think it is really boring, never used it for anything.

is not the cpu that is boring, is with ANOTHER win98 that become boring to have

Then go ahead, install Windows 95 and make it an awesome 1996 machine, along with some games from that era. You will not regret it.

Did you know the first stable version of Debian came out in 1996? Fun historical fact!

InTheStudy wrote on 2024-03-11, 20:32:

Did you know the first stable version of Debian came out in 1996? Fun historical fact!

And from my experience with Debian, they never updated a single package after that, only ever backported patches! It's the most stable distro I tried.

Interesting timing for your question, as I just put together a Pentium 200 MMX system a few days ago, and I put a bit of thought into this. For what it's worth, I installed Windows 95 (OSR2.5).

1. My entire purpose for this build is to closely replicate the "family PC" from 1997 - and it had Windows 95. I will be working on installing all the software and games that I can remember from that time. I even found the exact printer, scanner, monitor and speakers we used to have (on eBay) but I can't justify those purchases right now.

2. I already have one Windows 98 computer and don't need another one.

Will this computer actually be useful? Not really. I had already installed most of the aforementioned software on the Pentium 3 Windows 98 computer. And the P3 with 512MB RAM, Voodoo3, and 7200RPM HDD totally blows away the 200 MHz system in terms of speed and gaming performance anyway. I really just wanted to be immersed in the Windows 95 experience. The Explorer shell in 95 does have some interesting quirks and differences.

Personally, Win 95 is my favorite MS OS, specifically OSR 2.5, and would run great on a P200. I agree, go for it! 😀

I'd stick with DOS on it. Yes, it can run Win95 well or Win98 less so, but a lot of the software written for Win95 will be pretty slow on it, let alone Win98.

I had a P200MMX as late DOS system and even there some late DOS/Win3.x titles (Quake as the obvious example, but also Battle Isle 3 turn times) ran slower that I would like, so upgraded my late DOS system to K6-2 and then to Pentium 3 500. At last the late DOS things run without slowdowns. And of course it's not period correct, but period correct was suffering with hardware groaning under software it could only run at a slide show.

My starting point for Win98 is PII
Anything slower gets Win95 or even Win3x.
As Dionb said most of the time it'll be in dos, but having some version of Windows is always nice for file management.

I would.
If you only have one retro gaming PC then Win98 is a great choice. But if you have multiple, personally I think it's more interesting to try to use different OSes on them.

I have a 233MMX which I installed as a Win95/late DOS machine. The video card is currently a Rendition, but I could change that as the mood/game selection requires. To me this machine represents the Win95 period so it just makes sense to stay true to that.
Some Win95 games complain about Win98, and even if I could get those to work, I would still rather have the Win95 experience on what I view as a Win95 system. I want that PC to feel like ~1997.

Important technical advantages of Win98 (relevant to a system that can't run games that require it) are USB and FAT32 support - but both can be added to Win95 by using the later "OSR" versions. I've never messed with that so no idea how well it works.

You could do a dual boot with NT4. It's not as compatible with games as Win9x but many games of that period do work with NT. Nice thing about NT4 is that it's stable.

If you use either Win95 or NT4, think carefully before installing the "Active Desktop Update" which gets offered with the IE4 installer. Some people like it because it adds Win98 conveniences that are missing from the Win95/NT4 GUI - but it also slows it down. Personally I don't like how it bogs down a Pentium 1. If you've never tried it, make a disk image first in case you change your mind.

Yeh i will try win95, i need to investigate wich version is better to install... i will skip winME because i not like and win2000 because is targeted too high for my cpu and i prefer to keep my P4 in Win98 .

Min spec for Win2k is Pentium 133/32MB RAM/1GB HDD space... Recommended PII-300.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_2000#Deployment

Min spec for Win98 is 486DX2-66/16MB RAM... Recommended Pentium processor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_98#System_requirements

With Win98 you get USB, DVD players... How can you turn that down...

to be honest i'd go with 98, i have a p166 that i have tried with 95 and 98, 98 is just as fast in practice, just a fine with DOS and adds a bit that wasnt in 95

95 is more 'period correct' and kind of fun to use for nostalgia though

MikeSG wrote on 2024-03-12, 08:09:

Min spec for Win2k is Pentium 133/32MB RAM/1GB HDD space... Recommended PII-300. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_2000#Depl […]
Show full quote

Min spec for Win2k is Pentium 133/32MB RAM/1GB HDD space... Recommended PII-300.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_2000#Deployment

Min spec for Win98 is 486DX2-66/16MB RAM... Recommended Pentium processor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_98#System_requirements

With Win98 you get USB, DVD players... How can you turn that down...

Not much point in DVD players if the system isn't able to decode the MPEG2 you get off them or if it's a game run the game that is distributed on the medium acceptably...

Fundamentally there's four things you can do in terms of speccing systems:

1) challenge of installing on oldest possible hardware. I've had WinXP running on a 486 board with PODP underclocked to 16MHz. "Crawling" would be a more accurate term, with boot time approaching 30 minutes. Fun challenge but utterly unusable in practice.
2) period correct speccing: what would someone in year/month XX/YY be running in terms of hard and software combinations. Nice nostalgia, but with all the limitations we had back then too. Sub-case is the best possible config you could have had, i.e. what you lusted after but could not afford. Even then, hardware will generally struggle to satisfy software, particularly when running software designed for the OS but newer than the hardware (good luck with UT on a P200...)
3) getting the most enjoyable use out of given hardware or software, which in general will mean staying well above recommended minimum spec so that hardware will not limit. Downside is that it's generally going to be less period correct and/or mixing up hardware from different eras.
4) challenge of installing on newest possible hardware. Similar to 1, this is a (popular) niche activity, but one that comes with a lot of extra work and usually compromises in terms of compatibility.

OP should clarify which of these cases is the goal here. I default to 3 in my suggestions unless otherwise specified, as it is generally easiest to do and provides most usable result. That's the context of my suggesting DOS here. Windows 95 or 98 is category 2.

shamino wrote on 2024-03-12, 05:24:

If you use either Win95 or NT4, think carefully before installing the "Active Desktop Update" which gets offered with the IE4 installer. Some people like it because it adds Win98 conveniences that are missing from the Win95/NT4 GUI - but it also slows it down. Personally I don't like how it bogs down a Pentium 1. If you've never tried it, make a disk image first in case you change your mind.

This.

I started my build with OSR2. It was quick and snappy without all the extras. But since this is supposed to be an accurate-as-possible reproduction, I went ahead and installed the "Windows Desktop Update" to get the later style Explorer shell. It did cause a very noticeable slowdown, but for this purpose it doesn't really matter.

I always dual boot my Pentium 200 builds with Windows 95. For period correct gaming (i.e. 1995 to 1997), it works nicely.

AlessandroB wrote on 2024-03-12, 08:01:

Yeh i will try win95, i need to investigate wich version is better to install... i will skip winME because i not like and win2000 because is targeted too high for my cpu and i prefer to keep my P4 in Win98 .

Try Win95 as per my guide. 😉

As some others pointed out, going without Internet Explorer gives you an authentic and snappy experience, and does allow you a surprising amount of reach up the hardware hierarchy until you need Win98 or later... but I'm biased. I run Windows 95 on all my systems, up to the Athlon!

I have windows 95 on my 133mhz Compaq, runs great! I like windows 95 a lot, definitely nice to have as an addition to 98, honestly I even prefer it to 98, it’s much cleaner and more minimal imo.