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Best Windows 95 Version For 486 66MHz

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First post, by GabrielKnight123

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Hi all, what would be the best version of Windows 95 for a 486DX2 66MHz with 16MB of ram for gaming and possible Roland SC55? I have two CD's but I dont know what versions they are, I have:

0795 Part No. 000-04404
and
0796 Part No. 000-45234

From the above two can either of them support an installation to a Fat32 partition?

Reply 1 of 24, by oeuvre

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honestly I'd stick with DOS/WfW 3.11 for a DX2 66... 95 is gonna require a lot of patience on that. Speaking from experience.

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Reply 2 of 24, by GigAHerZ

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I also have 3 computer i keep in top notch condition: 386, 486 and Pentium MMX.
386 is pure DOS machine
486 is WfWg 3.11 machine
Pentium is Windows 95 machine

Works great. 😀

"640K ought to be enough for anybody." - And i intend to get every last bit out of it even after loading every damn driver!

Reply 3 of 24, by GabrielKnight123

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For this PC build I have Dos 6.21 on it and Win 3.11 is on the way but I only ask because im selling it later and thought the extra Windows 95 would make it stand out, im selling the whole build with a CRT monitor with built in speakers, a Roland SC55 mark 2, a new old stock PC case with NOS power supply, serial mouse, 5 pin din keyboard, noctua 40mm CPU fan, it has a dual boot manager for Dos and Windows 95. I ended up installing 95 it did take some time and was slow and I think I used 95B using FAT32 so all is good in the silicone chip valley 😀

Reply 4 of 24, by DellLatitudeCPx

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GabrielKnight123 wrote:
Hi all, what would be the best version of Windows 95 for a 486DX2 66MHz with 16MB of ram for gaming and possible Roland SC55? I […]
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Hi all, what would be the best version of Windows 95 for a 486DX2 66MHz with 16MB of ram for gaming and possible Roland SC55? I have two CD's but I dont know what versions they are, I have:

0795 Part No. 000-04404
and
0796 Part No. 000-45234

From the above two can either of them support an installation to a Fat32 partition?

As others have previously stated, I would stick with Win3.1 however if you wan't 95 on that machine, go with RTM. If they support FAT32, they are likely OSR 2 or 2.5.

Reply 5 of 24, by Intel486dx33

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I don’t know if Win95 will run on a 486dx-66mhz computer but you definitely want to use a CF card for a hard-drive. They provide better performance and multitasking.

I use a CF card with my AMD 5x86-133 running at 133mhz. , 64mb. Ram, And it performs good in Win95c.
I use the Sandisk Extreme 8gb. CF card.
Using Nortons Antivirus I can scan the drive for viruses, play a music CD and surf the internet at the same time.
I would not be able to do this with a conventional mechanical hard-drive.

Reply 6 of 24, by Andrew T.

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000-45234 is the part number for the OSR2 release, which is a prerequisite for FAT32.

I briefly ran Windows 95 on a computer of identical specifications (486DX2-66/16MB RAM) back in the day, and thought the performance was acceptable. Avoiding the installation of IE (and avoiding most post-1995 software) helped.

Reply 7 of 24, by Jo22

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My father once ran Win 95 RTM on a 386DX40 with 16MiB of RAM.. Performance was "okay" for business and a few desktop games.
So I see no reason why it shouldn't run fine on a 486 (any model), too.

On a 486DX2-66, even Windows 98SE can run. Or crawl, to be honest. 🙁
CF card are also nice for any DOS/Win3.1 machine. Win9x does more swapping stuff, though,
which might resoult in jerky HDD reaction depending on the card model (system may hang for very short moments each time).

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In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

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Reply 8 of 24, by canthearu

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Win95 OSR2 will run fine on a 486-DX2 66.

Good for downloading stuff over the network or running very basic windows games.

Also great if you have a larger hard drive (more than 2gig)

Reply 9 of 24, by brostenen

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We all ran Win95 first release on 486's, back in 1995. DX, DX2 and so on. In retrospekt, it was a really slow experience. We did it because that was what type of hardware we had at that time. My advice, like many others here, is to stick with MS-Dos 6.22 on 486. Even on a Pentium-1 system, I will say MS-Dos 6.22

Don't eat stuff off a 15 year old never cleaned cpu cooler.
Those cakes make you sick....

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Reply 10 of 24, by Fimbulvetr

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I have a 486 laptop -- Compaq LTE -- it runs the floppy disk version of Windows 95 perfectly fine.

Reply 11 of 24, by Jo22

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brostenen wrote:

We all ran Win95 first release on 486's, back in 1995. DX, DX2 and so on.
In retrospekt, it was a really slow experience. We did it because that was what type of hardware we had at that time.

Same here. In my country or place, Win95 was hyped a lot even before it materialized.
Unfortunately, the hardware here was still behind the current gen,
perhaps because of the conservative attitude here, ie, don't throw things away as long as they work.
Even XT/286 machines were still around in the public (cash registers, terminals in big libraries) , say 1996-98 or so.

Also, most current software was available as Win16 binaries, sometimes even included as a fallback in a Win95 product.
I guess that was the reason why 486/386es lasted till the end of the 90s and vendors continued
to sell 486 PCs with Win95 or offered upgrades for 386 PCs, since they could at least run less-demanding 3.1 applications.

Back then, I often saw totally underpowered Win95 machines.
The speed was okay most of the time (386Dx40, 486DX, 486DX2-66 etc), but the memory.. Jesus! 4 to 6MB only. 😢
And *if* more memory was available, the mainbaord cache didn't got equally upgraded as well.

Looking back, it was similar to the previous 286 times in which those poos PCs only got 1MB of RAM,
but were expected to run Windows 3.1 at full speed (and if they didn't, either the CPU or Windows was considered being junk).
Same for OS/2. It needed 16MB to work flawlessly, but often got 8 at best. Vobis sold such underpowered machines, I recall
(but to their defense - at least they offered OS/2, which as a nice move, so the OS got a chance to show its abilities.)

In the minds of these people, apparently only two things mattered in that era:
CPU Speed (raw clock rate, without considering the underlying architecture) and..
fat, loud hard disks (regardless of access speed, cache, etc). 😉

Ah, what a wonderful time for PC vendors that sold their old junk to PC newbies. 😁

Edit: Edited.

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 12 of 24, by GabrielKnight123

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My old friend Mike M. had a great time during the time of old days with memory that was soldered to the main board he said once that he made a mint in his shop from memory upgrades best time he had. I have installed 95 with FAT32 (OSR2?) and it seems to be ok but I have not run any games yet to test loading speed or stability I'll cross my fingers and wear a rabbits foot around my neck and hope for the best.

Reply 13 of 24, by Damaniel

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Intel486dx33 wrote:
I don’t know if Win95 will run on a 486dx-66mhz computer but you definitely want to use a CF card for a hard-drive. They provide […]
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I don’t know if Win95 will run on a 486dx-66mhz computer but you definitely want to use a CF card for a hard-drive. They provide better performance and multitasking.

I use a CF card with my AMD 5x86-133 running at 133mhz. , 64mb. Ram, And it performs good in Win95c.
I use the Sandisk Extreme 8gb. CF card.
Using Nortons Antivirus I can scan the drive for viruses, play a music CD and surf the internet at the same time.
I would not be able to do this with a conventional mechanical hard-drive.

It will run on a 486/66, but you won't be able to do much multitasking, even with 16MB of RAM. Any class of Pentium makes the experience a lot better.

Reply 14 of 24, by biessea

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I came here cause I have the same Pc just restored.

Intel dx2-66mhz with 16mb of RAM.

I will go for Win 3.11 and Dos games 😀

Ps: I have a AMD dx4 100mhz too... It's much better to stick on that one?

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Love retro-computing, retro-gaming, high-end systems and all about computer-tech.
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Reply 15 of 24, by keenmaster486

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Upgrade to 32 MB RAM on that if you want Win95 to be tolerable.

World's foremost 486 enjoyer.

Reply 16 of 24, by rmay635703

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keenmaster486 wrote on 2022-11-29, 18:02:

Upgrade to 32 MB RAM on that if you want Win95 to be tolerable.

There are dx2’s and there are dx2’s

Going from an isa based dx2 with no cache to a dx2, local bus, quantum fireball with 256k cache made windows 95 run much better

The 8mb Windows 95 experience wasn’t that terrible for the time unless you wanted to web surf.
16mb better
32mb even nicer

All my 486’s ram windows 95 or 98, no real complaints but it is a very different experience than the modern expectations of zero wait or lag.

Reply 17 of 24, by Jo22

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I think the kind of applications also matter.
It's perhaps necessary to look back in time, to get a more complete picture.

Programs from the early Windows 95 days were rather small. Say, 30 KiB to 300 KiB roughly.
Partly also because 16-Bit or early 32-Bit development tools were in use at the time.
Some even created Win32s compatible binaries, still.

The year of change was roughly around 1997, when Windows 98 was on the horizon.
Compact, Windows 3.1 era applications became less and less.

So if the PC does run "period-correct" applications only (how I dislike that term),
then a 386/486 with low memory will do.

For example, I believe that the original Windows 95 runs Windows 3.1 and early Windows 95 programs "okay" with 16MiB.
That's what I remember from the 90s, after all.

That being said, I vaguely remember reading about an interview in which MS devs explained that Windows 95 doesn't stop excessive swapping with less than 32MB RAM.

Considering that OS/2 had similar "high" requirements at the time (8-16MB minimum recommended in that shootout video), it seems believable to me.

Also, I do remember how the HDD lights constantly flashed on my fathers 386 under Windows 95.
Not just that usual, soft blinking pattern every second or so.
No, Windows 95 was constantly doing something on the HDD even when idle.

Edit: Considering that memory is available these days, I would considering maxing out the RAM.
Up to 64 MiB is no problem for MS-DOS 6.x+Windows 3.1 or Windows 95.
Both Himem.sys and EMM386 can use that.

The cacheable area in most 486 era motherboards covers 16 or 64 MiB maximum, also.
In some situations its necessary to expand the cache memory, also.
64KiB.. 16MiB, 128KiB.. 32MiB, 256KiB.. 64MiB

In Write-Back mode, the values must be twice the size.

Source: http://dosdays.co.uk/topics/cache.php

Another esoteric "thing" is the direction in which memory is allocated, maybe.
Bottom-up vs Top-down. Himem.sys might be involved, also.
Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 do work differently here.
And that's why some older mainboards with cache issues have low performance under Windows 95.

What order does Windows 3.11 use memory?

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 18 of 24, by Disruptor

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Jo22 wrote on 2022-11-30, 06:09:
The cacheable area in most 486 era motherboards covers 16 or 64 MiB maximum, also. In some situations its necessary to expand th […]
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The cacheable area in most 486 era motherboards covers 16 or 64 MiB maximum, also.
In some situations its necessary to expand the cache memory, also.
64KiB.. 16MiB, 128KiB.. 32MiB, 256KiB.. 64MiB

In Write-Back mode, the values must be twice the size.

Depends on the point of view.
If you refer to cacheable area like before, it must be half ot the size in write back mode.

So 32 MB should be ideal for any DX2 DX4 486.

Reply 19 of 24, by chinny22

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Not that much difference between a DX2/66 and DX4/100.
Load times will be marginally quicker, Doom will be bit smoother on larger levels with lots of monsters but anything thats unplayable on a DX2 is still unplayable on anything faster.
16MB is probably a good amount of RAM, 32MB gives you headroom.

Personally I go 64MB which is over the cache limit, but again the performance hit isn't really noticeable in the grad scheme of things and I like to mess around with RAM drives and different OS's where the RAM is useful