have a look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSehRwClXNk

I don't recall signal differences on IDE for HD..vs.CD - if y9ur HD works the CD should as well.

I'd check that the drive(s) are jumpered correctly. If on a single cable with the HD, then the CD should be "Slave"
If on it's own cable/connector that it should be "master"

I don't have W95 on floppy anymore, but I do recall that they were "extended density" and 1.6 sounds about right.

I see InternetArchives offers both "Standard" images (.IMG) and ImageDisk images (.IMD) if your drive is capable of writing extended density (some could read it but not write it), ImageDisk should be able to recreate the floppies)

I also vaguely recall that some of the early Win95 install CDs had am ability to create the floppies - I have two CD, one is "Windows 95B" and one is "Windows 95 Upgrade" and I don't see anythig like that on them (granted I've not actuallly run SETUP)

IIRC - Win95 setup ran mostly under DOS - there's even a folder of MSdos tools to "upgrade" your DOS first on the "Upgrade" CD/

It's possible that you could put the CD content on a second hard-drive, and run SETUP from there - it might find the install files "as if" they were on a cd - I've not tested this, but it might be worth a try!

DaveDDS wrote on Today, 16:24:

It's possible that you could put the CD content on a second hard-drive, and run SETUP from there - it might find the install files "as if" they were on a cd - I've not tested this, but it might be worth a try!

I did it many times - works fine.
It doesn't have to be a second HDD, you can as well install from the first HDD.
No need to have the entire CD content, only the "WIN95" directory is necessary.

Grzyb wrote on Today, 16:42:

...It doesn't have to be a second HDD ...

Good to know.

I thought that might work... The main reason I would go the "2nd HD" route is that I like to install an OS "cold". Don't have to worry about fragmentation and system files getting planted "far out" on the drive (at least a "CD content" worth.

If I were doing this without a CD, I'd probably not only use a 2nd HD, but boot from floppy and do a complete "fresh" install where the primary drive is formatted and everything gets created on a "blank" drive.

As DaveDDS said, with certain exceptions like caching controllers, there is nothing at the hardware level that had to change to make an IDE interface ATAPI-capable. More likely it's a cable or jumpering issue.

Copying the WIN95 directory from the CD-ROM to the C:\ drive and installing from there has indeed been standard practice since hard drives got into the multigigabyte range. In addition to making it easier to install, it addresses the issue of Win95 demanding the CD-ROM when you change network settings among other things.

You probably want OSR2.x for FAT32 support. The floppy disk version would not have been that.