8 ms·

So, out of curiosity, what’s the fastest PC that will still work on 95, 98, XP respectively? I recently tried installing XP on my desktop and, despite it being

So, out of curiosity, what’s the fastest PC that will still work on 95, 98, XP respectively? I recently tried installing XP on my desktop and, despite it being old enough to still be compatible and have drivers available, I wasn’t able to ever get it installed. I’m still trying to figure it out. I certainly don’t remember it being this difficult the last time I tried it... (before 2010?)

Splognosticus 7y ago
It's not Windows 95, but a while back LGR did try installing MS-DOS 6.22[1] on a modern gaming PC. Things got weird basically immediately but it did more or less work. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS9hiSwL1KY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS9hiSwL1KY
- jplayer01 7y ago
  That was a great video, thanks. He apparently also did a Win XP video, where he put together his dream PC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XTnL4Mang0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XTnL4Mang0
  - Splognosticus 7y ago
    Ah yeah he's got a fair few of that kind of video--basically one from each major era of PCs all the way back to the original XT. His whole channel is great. He's so enthusiastic about all of this retro hardware and software. Even though I've seen most of them a few times at least it's still my go-to for relaxing YouTube binges.
- DrStalker 7y ago
  If he can get DOS installed and CDROM drivers working he should be able to install at least windows 95a. Windows 95b preferred to use its own drivers (or drivers loaded from a floppy disk) for such things, but the early versions felt more like a GUI running on top of DOS.
nordsieck 7y ago
> So, out of curiosity, what’s the fastest PC that will still work on 95, 98, XP respectively? One issue I ran into the hard way is that win 98 (and presumably 95) gets very unstable if you have more than 3/4 of a Gig of ram installed.
- orionblastar 7y ago
  I used to run Windows 95 and 98 in QEMU and DOSBOX. Quite snappy on my Intel i7 system. There is also this option: https://www.windowslatest.com/2018/08/25/run-windows-95-on-windows-10/ https://www.windowslatest.com/2018/08/25/run-windows-95-on-w... But it can crash on you.
Laforet 7y ago
For Intel platforms, drivers for Windows 98 were provided up to the Northwood Pentium 4 era (8xx chipsets). Windows XP support lasted a bit longer but it was rather patchy by the Core 2 era and seems to have totally dried up by 2010. Nevertheless Intel has recently purged a lot of older drivers and documentations from their website so it's hard to be sure. ATI dropped XP support in 2013, nVidia have actually managed to ship Windows XP drivers until 2016.
bcaa7f3a8bbc 7y ago
Windows XP installation CD doesn't have AHCI driver and cannot recognize hard drives on most computers since 2008, and only allows you to load an external device driver via a floppy disk, which is obviously not helpful. You can set your SATA controller to IDE mode in BIOS to install, but there's a performance penalty, and because of how Windows XP handles disk drivers, it's difficult if not impossible to enable native AHCI after Windows XP is already installed, you are likely to get a BSoD after you flip the switch. A better choice is patching the installation disc to bundle a AHCI driver in it, works like a charm. First, download and install nLite [0], a Windows installation disc modding tool, and then download a copy of Rapid Storage Technology driver from Intel (in zip format) [1] and decompress it. Finally, open your Windowx XP disc image in nLite, bundle driver "iaAHCI.inf", and burn a new CD. You can find a lot of tutorials on the web [2]. You may need to bundle other essential drivers as well, USB and Ethernet comes to mind. I still have a Windows XP SP3 CD in my CD collection, it is the original MSDN version with an AHCI driver bundled, although I haven't used it in the last 6 years or so... [0] https://www.nliteos.com/ https://www.nliteos.com/ [1] https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/23295/Intel-Rapid-Storage-Technology-AHCI-for-Windows-XP-for-Intel-NUC https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/23295/Intel-Rapid-... [2] https://www.prime-expert.com/articles/b02/installing-windows-xp-with-f6-ahci-raid-drivers-from-usb-only/ https://www.prime-expert.com/articles/b02/installing-windows...
- xattt 7y ago
  The NT/2k/XP installers prompted the user to load a controller driver from a floppy. Would this serve as a fix for the problem you describe or are you referring to installing Windows XP on something modern-day?
  - bcaa7f3a8bbc 7y ago
    Yes. I did mention this possibility in my original comment, however, don't expect to find a floppy drive on modern machines with AHCI...
    - soganess 7y ago
Denvercoder9 7y ago
This link about Windows 95 crashing when it has too much RAM was posted on HN recently: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030814-00/?p=42903 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030814-00/?p=42...
paulmd 7y ago
You can run Windows 95 on any current x86-64 PC. They are basically backwards compatible all the way to 8088. The problem is you will have no drivers for any OS that old. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IO2BSLkQLDA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IO2BSLkQLDA
- jplayer01 7y ago
  Which is the point, no? What good is a PC where nothing works? Cool video though.
  - userbinator 7y ago
    The standard PC peripherals will still work, and although you can only use one core, it's one core of a very fast CPU (relative to what was around when it was released and designed to run acceptably on), and gives you an idea how much "modern bloat" there is.
    - jplayer01 7y ago
      Well, ignoring the fact that WLAN/Ethernet won’t work without drivers (since internet is a bad idea with XP anyway), Sound and graphics don’t work either. So games are out, which is really the only reason I have for running XP. It’s too limited without working drivers and can’t be considered a working system.
- throwaheyy 7y ago
  You likely wouldn’t find DIMMs small enough to boot it though. When I tried to prank my boss by replacing the HDD in his machine with one loaded with W95 it would not boot with even 512mb.
  - paulmd 7y ago
    There are command-line options to limit the amount of memory Windows sees. See the video.
- 7y ago
jaclaz 7y ago
There are a number of limitations. Here is a thread where surely compatible motherboards are listed (for XP): https://msfn.org/board/topic/177563-newer-motherboards-that-support-winxp/ https://msfn.org/board/topic/177563-newer-motherboards-that-... The issue is mainly with drivers, though there are (unofficial) drivers for a few newish thingies (like NVME and USB 3.x) they do not work on all motherboards. Here is one for 9x: https://msfn.org/board/topic/97588-modern-motherboards-which-are-working-with-windows-98-discussion/ https://msfn.org/board/topic/97588-modern-motherboards-which...
fuzzfactor 7y ago
You will want this AMD K6 update regardless of your processor to bring W95b reliably up to 2.0GHz: http://users.efni.com/~carsten/amd/readme.html http://users.efni.com/~carsten/amd/readme.html

Splognosticus 7y ago

It's not Windows 95, but a while back LGR did try installing MS-DOS 6.22[1] on a modern gaming PC. Things got weird basically immediately but it did more or less work. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS9hiSwL1KY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS9hiSwL1KY

jplayer01 7y ago
That was a great video, thanks. He apparently also did a Win XP video, where he put together his dream PC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XTnL4Mang0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XTnL4Mang0
- Splognosticus 7y ago
  Ah yeah he's got a fair few of that kind of video--basically one from each major era of PCs all the way back to the original XT. His whole channel is great. He's so enthusiastic about all of this retro hardware and software. Even though I've seen most of them a few times at least it's still my go-to for relaxing YouTube binges.
DrStalker 7y ago
If he can get DOS installed and CDROM drivers working he should be able to install at least windows 95a. Windows 95b preferred to use its own drivers (or drivers loaded from a floppy disk) for such things, but the early versions felt more like a GUI running on top of DOS.

nordsieck 7y ago

> So, out of curiosity, what’s the fastest PC that will still work on 95, 98, XP respectively? One issue I ran into the hard way is that win 98 (and presumably 95) gets very unstable if you have more than 3/4 of a Gig of ram installed.

orionblastar 7y ago
I used to run Windows 95 and 98 in QEMU and DOSBOX. Quite snappy on my Intel i7 system. There is also this option: https://www.windowslatest.com/2018/08/25/run-windows-95-on-windows-10/ https://www.windowslatest.com/2018/08/25/run-windows-95-on-w... But it can crash on you.

Laforet 7y ago

For Intel platforms, drivers for Windows 98 were provided up to the Northwood Pentium 4 era (8xx chipsets). Windows XP support lasted a bit longer but it was rather patchy by the Core 2 era and seems to have totally dried up by 2010. Nevertheless Intel has recently purged a lot of older drivers and documentations from their website so it's hard to be sure. ATI dropped XP support in 2013, nVidia have actually managed to ship Windows XP drivers until 2016.

bcaa7f3a8bbc 7y ago

Windows XP installation CD doesn't have AHCI driver and cannot recognize hard drives on most computers since 2008, and only allows you to load an external device driver via a floppy disk, which is obviously not helpful. You can set your SATA controller to IDE mode in BIOS to install, but there's a performance penalty, and because of how Windows XP handles disk drivers, it's difficult if not impossible to enable native AHCI after Windows XP is already installed, you are likely to get a BSoD after you flip the switch. A better choice is patching the installation disc to bundle a AHCI driver in it, works like a charm. First, download and install nLite [0], a Windows installation disc modding tool, and then download a copy of Rapid Storage Technology driver from Intel (in zip format) [1] and decompress it. Finally, open your Windowx XP disc image in nLite, bundle driver "iaAHCI.inf", and burn a new CD. You can find a lot of tutorials on the web [2]. You may need to bundle other essential drivers as well, USB and Ethernet comes to mind. I still have a Windows XP SP3 CD in my CD collection, it is the original MSDN version with an AHCI driver bundled, although I haven't used it in the last 6 years or so... [0] https://www.nliteos.com/ https://www.nliteos.com/ [1] https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/23295/Intel-Rapid-Storage-Technology-AHCI-for-Windows-XP-for-Intel-NUC https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/23295/Intel-Rapid-... [2] https://www.prime-expert.com/articles/b02/installing-windows-xp-with-f6-ahci-raid-drivers-from-usb-only/ https://www.prime-expert.com/articles/b02/installing-windows...

xattt 7y ago
The NT/2k/XP installers prompted the user to load a controller driver from a floppy. Would this serve as a fix for the problem you describe or are you referring to installing Windows XP on something modern-day?
- bcaa7f3a8bbc 7y ago
  Yes. I did mention this possibility in my original comment, however, don't expect to find a floppy drive on modern machines with AHCI...
  - soganess 7y ago

Denvercoder9 7y ago

This link about Windows 95 crashing when it has too much RAM was posted on HN recently: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030814-00/?p=42903 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030814-00/?p=42...

paulmd 7y ago

You can run Windows 95 on any current x86-64 PC. They are basically backwards compatible all the way to 8088. The problem is you will have no drivers for any OS that old. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IO2BSLkQLDA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IO2BSLkQLDA

jplayer01 7y ago
Which is the point, no? What good is a PC where nothing works? Cool video though.
- userbinator 7y ago
  The standard PC peripherals will still work, and although you can only use one core, it's one core of a very fast CPU (relative to what was around when it was released and designed to run acceptably on), and gives you an idea how much "modern bloat" there is.
  - jplayer01 7y ago
    Well, ignoring the fact that WLAN/Ethernet won’t work without drivers (since internet is a bad idea with XP anyway), Sound and graphics don’t work either. So games are out, which is really the only reason I have for running XP. It’s too limited without working drivers and can’t be considered a working system.
throwaheyy 7y ago
You likely wouldn’t find DIMMs small enough to boot it though. When I tried to prank my boss by replacing the HDD in his machine with one loaded with W95 it would not boot with even 512mb.
- paulmd 7y ago
  There are command-line options to limit the amount of memory Windows sees. See the video.
7y ago

jaclaz 7y ago

There are a number of limitations. Here is a thread where surely compatible motherboards are listed (for XP): https://msfn.org/board/topic/177563-newer-motherboards-that-support-winxp/ https://msfn.org/board/topic/177563-newer-motherboards-that-... The issue is mainly with drivers, though there are (unofficial) drivers for a few newish thingies (like NVME and USB 3.x) they do not work on all motherboards. Here is one for 9x: https://msfn.org/board/topic/97588-modern-motherboards-which-are-working-with-windows-98-discussion/ https://msfn.org/board/topic/97588-modern-motherboards-which...

fuzzfactor 7y ago

You will want this AMD K6 update regardless of your processor to bring W95b reliably up to 2.0GHz: http://users.efni.com/~carsten/amd/readme.html http://users.efni.com/~carsten/amd/readme.html