If you want to use 98SE, I'd recommend using 64MB RAM. I'm not sure about Win95 but as I understand it, the more, the better when looking at the hardware you intend to use.

I'd say give 98SE a try.

Anyone else?

Windows 95 is probably better for a 486/5x86 class CPU. I think 98 is going to be a bit heavy on the CPU.

Chaniyth wrote:

Right now I have MS-DOS 6.22 and a pimped out Windows 3.11 WFWG installed on it (has TCP/IP stack installed, a shell mod, etc), however i'm looking to replace the Win 3.11 to something more "modern" for that era.

Is there something in particular that you want to do with this computer for which MS-DOS 6.22 and Win3.11 is not suitable? This may affect your answer.

98SE wouldn't be overkill, though the 'web' explorer shell will be sluggish no matter what your computer is.

Try to 98Lite with the old shell if you can.

The reason I have 98 on a 486 is so I could go nuts and try newer games and apps on it i.e. Metal Gear Solid 😜

If you only going to use a pentium 1 at 100mhz, i recommend to leave it on dos and maybe with windows 3.11.. Then you could take a harddrive till 6 - 8 GB..

Otherwise go for a faster pentium one.. Like 166 - 233 mhz.. Then i would recommend to install dos 7.01 + dual boot with windows 95.. Then they would regonize FAT32.. And then you could use bigger drives as well.

I have more trust in windows 95 OSR 2.0 then i go for windows 98se, because its still buggy to my. Still Explorer.exe would crash or a other error..

Back in 1995 I used to have a pentium 100MHz, 8mb RAM in the beginning and an old maxtor 234mb HDD. Windows 95 used to run almost fine. It was perfect when I upgraded the RAM to 40mb.
What's important is the amount of RAM, provided that you have even a simple windows accelerator card (CL 1MB or better). So on that pc, I think 95 is going to be ok.

I would use Windows 98SE. The performance between it and Windows 95 on a good Pentium machine with more than 32mb RAM I feel is negligible and a worthwhile sacrifice to gain more modern features and a wider array of hardware support. Also, I find that the web-centric interface of Win98 is actually quite nice even for offline use. The command line in every explorer window, quick launch bar and more customizable shell is a nice luxury. That is, unless of course, the computer is still using that 234mb hard drive you mentioned in the original post in which case I would recommend Win95 OSR2.

Also, for Win98SE, there's some interesting goodies from the past few years that allow you to modernize it a bit including KernelEx, the Unnoficial Win98 Service Pack, Win98 Revolutions Pack and you can also run Office XP which is the oldest version Microsoft lets you use their 2007 compatibility pack with. While being able to work with modern versions of Office might seem moot for a gaming system, my own philosophy with computers is that no matter the purpose, if I can get it running, I might as well be able to set it up in such a manner that, if somehow, it winds up being the only working computer I have access to, I can somehow make do.

Markk wrote:

Back in 1995 I used to have a pentium 100MHz, 8mb RAM in the beginning and an old maxtor 234mb HDD. Windows 95 used to run almost fine. It was perfect when I upgraded the RAM to 40mb.
What's important is the amount of RAM, provided that you have even a simple windows accelerator card (CL 1MB or better). So on that pc, I think 95 is going to be ok.

If you want to make a normal pentium as they were, then you could easly take a normal harddisk as 500mb - 2GB.. But if you need the storage (because full of games). Its handy to have a bigger one, otherwise you walk against problems of storage when you system is already running and you want more software on it. Better save then sorry..

Robin4 wrote:

If you only going to use a pentium 1 at 100mhz, i recommend to leave it on dos and maybe with windows 3.11..

No

A Pentium 100MHz can handle Win98 and Win95 fine

Robin4 wrote:

If you want to make a normal pentium as they were, then you could easly take a normal harddisk as 500mb - 2GB.. But if you need the storage (because full of games). Its handy to have a bigger one, otherwise you walk against problems of storage when you system is already running and you want more software on it. Better save then sorry..

I agree with you. I used a small disk then, because I was 14 years old, and couldn't afford a larger one at the time. As a matter of fact, persuading my father to give me money to upgrade from a 386/40 to a pentium/100 was really great for me. I also had the same monochrome 14" vga monitor bought with my first 286 in 1991, since 1999 when it died....(I think it was it's second "death"... Initially it had stopped working back in 1997-98. I just stopped using my pc, but I didn't throw it away. Some months later I tried powering on the monitor just in case it worked, but nothing. Then I accidentally kicked it, and it worked. So for about a year, it was working like that. It stopped sometimes, and when I hit it hard it was ok for a while... )

What I wanted to say is that when you are going to use windows, from 3.1 up to modern versions, having as much memory as possible is the key to a good performance. For example, if you run 3.1, a 386/40 having 16mb may be actually faster than a 486/66 with only 4mb. For a 486/pentium running windows 95 if you have at least 32 mb RAM, it should be great.

Chaniyth wrote:

I have an original Windows 95 OSR 2.5b CD

I had a 486DX-4 100 once with W95B and after a clean install it was ok, but the machine was always sluggish. I remember using Opera at that time because everything else just killed the machine.

Wouldn't go with W98, I don't think that machine will do well.

Surely 98 Micro and Win 95 can't be that far off from each other, can they? (Besides, doesn't OSR 2.5b already have the IE4 shell?)

^ Win 98SE has WDM driver support, better USB support. Though on a mid-90s Pentium box, I suppose neither would really matter.

But of course. I would think Windows 95 would still have a huge number of unpatched bugs that were only fixed in 98 SE, too.

I should clarify that I was thinking speed-wise 98 Micro and Win 95 ought to be pretty close.

Jorpho wrote:

(Besides, doesn't OSR 2.5b already have the IE4 shell?)

Fortunately that's a choice. You can deny the installation of the IE4 shell out of the box.

Maybe IE4, but not the shell integration. That is, as I recall, 98 Micro requires the shell files from Win95a , and later versions are unsuitable.

Thanks for all the amazing suggestions all, I have elected to use FreeDOS. I might be installing Win 3.11 WFWG soon though, so it'll be a FreeDOS + Win 3.11 WFWG system. 😀

If I wanna do any Windows 9x based games i'll just use my Pentium III 550Mhz system for those. 😀

Update: Okay, so Windows 3.11 does NOT run on FreeDOS whatsoever, ugh. 😢

So that means either MS-DOS 6.22 + Windows 3.11 WFWG [are there any Long File Name extensions for MS-DOS 6.22?] or Windows '98 SE [98 Micro] for me.

Chaniyth wrote:

Update: Okay, so Windows 3.11 does NOT run on FreeDOS whatsoever, ugh. 😢

Are you sure? Perhaps you started reading http://www.freedos.org/freedos/news/technote/200.html but did not scroll down to the Update at the very bottom? (Seriously, I did that at least once myself. The FreeDOS documentation leaves much to be desired. See also http://www.freedos.org/freedos/news/newsitem/166.html .)

are there any Long File Name extensions for MS-DOS 6.22?

I think so, but I'm not sure why you would want to use them if you don't actually have Win9x installed. There's a lot that can go wrong.