Kroc CamenApr 27, 2025
My #Win95 VM has become very unstable on this new machine (AMD Ryzen 7450U) I'll probably have to switch to #PCem, but that's so hard to setup and run :(
Show threadKroc Camen

Actually I need a solution that runs on Linux too as I’ll be moving this machine off Win11 at some point :/

Edit: #PCem is on Linux but on this laptop I may struggle to run a P166 😭 #VMware is apparently available on #Linux and others have said that it’s more stable, but I don’t know what the driver situation is like; every VM vendor has abandoned 9x support 😢 — my #Win95 VM uses the #VirtualBox 6.0 drivers as those were the last to support 9x

#retrocomputing

Apr 27, 2025 at 8:15amWeb
Show threadKroc CamenApr 27, 2025

I don't like the enshitification of Win95 when IE4 is installed, so I wanted to install the earliest version of Win95 to avoid all that. Something I didn't realise is that RTM & OSR1 (aka WIN95A) can't handle FAT32! Getting it installed at all was quite the hurdle; Win95 CDs are not bootable, and whilst the OSR2 floppy has CD drivers, the OSR1 disk does not! You can't fdisk from the OSR2 floppy because it will use FAT32 so you boot using the OSR1 floppy, fdisk in FAT16 and then boot using the OSR2 floppy to run the OSR1 CD setup.

We have certainly come a long way with installing OSes.

The troubles don't end there; RTM/OSR1 were so fully superseded by OSR2.5 that a lot of software, like driver installers, won't even run on an early Win95!

Show threadKroc CamenApr 27, 2025

But it is worth it...

#retrocomputing

Show threadKroc CamenApr 28, 2025
ARE YOU READY TO EXPLORE THE F*CKING WORLD!? #retrocomputing
Show threadSonikkuApr 27, 2025
@Kroc
I couldn't even see the text without my glasses but instantly recognized them as Weezer