Windows 95 на 286

Hi there.

I had a look at the System Requirements for Windows 95 and was wondering why it can be run on a 80386 DX CPU.
In 1995 386 DX-16 CPUs are 10 Years old and even newer ones only go up to 33 Mhz (Intel) or 40 Mhz (AMD).

I recently installed Windows 95 (first version) on a 386 DX-20 with 4MB of RAM for testing.
I had to tune DOS a little bit to get more memory for installer but finaly is works.
Well, it is very sluggish cause of only 4MB Ram but it works. The installation of Office 95 tooks about one hour but Word and Excel are running fine.
Now i got 8MB of Ram and it feels much better cause of less HDD activity.
Showing some low res jpgs with acdsee is horrible slow and playing wav wont work with internal player.

But what can i do with Win95 on a 386CPU?

I know, Windows 3.1 is much better for older computers, but maybe i can use Windows 95 for running older Win3.1 software with true multitasking?
Do you know some efficient and quick applications for win3.1/w95 that where used in the past for business, home office work and multi media?

Maybe Office 4.x?

Any image viewer, audio player, personal information manager for use on 386er cpus?

Back in the days i run Windows 95 on a Pentium 90 machine, but I just want to know this cause of my interrest in classic computers.

Thank you.

You should’ve posted this in the 386/486 section.

Anyway, Windows 95 can run even on a 386SX, and the reason is that the progress in 386/486/586/686 was mostly in speed, there was no problem developing 386-compatible software, only it ran slow on a 386.
No, you can’t use Windows 95 to run Windows 3.1 software with preemptive multitasking, as preemptive multitasking only applies to Win32 and DOS programs, Win16 stuff still works with cooperative multitasking.
Yes, you can use some office software, but it’s not going to be fast. Even more RAM could be helpful, your mobo probably has 8 sockets for 30-pin SIMM modules, if you can find 4MB SIMMs you can have 32MB total.
Forget about modern multimedia. Yes, if you install a sound card, you can play WAV, MID and low-end AVI files — basically the same as in Windows 3.1, but forget about MP3, DIVX, DirectX stuff…

For a 386 era, the most useful OS is pure DOS.

386 «SX» is slower than a decent 286 most of the time — they were marketing garbage.

Now, a 386DX40 was a decent CPU. It wasn’t really unseated in the market until the 486DX2/66.

Generally:
386SX < 286
386DX > 286
486SX < 386DX
486DX > 386DX

4MB, particularly if it’s Win95 OSR2 is treading on the bare edge of usability. 8MB will result in less thrashing.

Yes, I know that Microsoft originally claimed that 4MB was sufficient for Win95, but that’s stretching the truth a bit…

386 «SX» is slower than a decent 286 most of the time — they were marketing garbage.

It’s marginally slower, I’d say it’s the same speed most of the time.
It’s not exactly ‘marketing garbage’ either, since the 386SX allowed you to run 32-bit software.
386SX basically was a 386-compatible CPU on a 286-ish motherboard (various later 286 chipsets can be used for both 286 and 386SX), giving you a 32-bit system at the price of a 16-bit one.

Now, a 386DX40 was a decent CPU. It wasn’t really unseated in the market until the 486DX2/66.

It would help if you checked the history.
The 386DX-40 arrived very late to the market, even after the 486DX2-66.
It was a budget solution, and mainly competed with the 486SX models from Intel.

That is incorrect. The only difference between a 486SX and a 486DX is the lack of the internal FPU. Since a 386DX doesn’t have an internal FPU to begin with, the 386 and 486 only compete on integer workloads anyway. The 486 will easily beat a 386 at the same clockspeed. In practice a 486SX-25 was somewhere between a 386DX-33 and 40, depending on the exact application and exact configuration of the systems (caches, videocards, memory speed, chipset, use of VLB localbus etc).

I recall some magazine ad claiming that 486SX/25 is faster than 386DX/40.
And, according to some benchmark (Dhrystone?) it was true: 486 internal cache was very fast, so a tiny benchmark running entirely in the cache also ran fast.
With larger working sets, however, the winner was 386DX/40.

FWIW, I installed Win95 (original 13-floppy-disk version) on a Compaq 386sx-20 with 16MB of RAM and a 60MB HDD. It also had a network card (the goal here was getting online with «broadband» with such antiquated hardware). I squeezed about as much as I could on the 60MB HDD with some simple games, an old version of ClarisWorks for an office suite and a few other goodies. While I was able to use Opera for a browser, pages loaded slower than on a 486DX66 using dial-up. Still have the machine in the pile (somewhere) so if I get into the mode of wanting self-torment, it’s there waiting….

I actually did walk Win95 on a 386SX-16 with 5MB of RAM (4 1MB SIMMs and 1MB in DIPs) on a pair of 70MB Rodime half height MFM drives.

No, it wasn’t fast, but it did work.

Back in the day I ran Windows 95 on some 386 laptops. I forget the exact specs, but they had 8mb ram, that kept 95 fairly happy.

The big trick on low memory machines is not to even try to load networking at all. The networking software sort of acts as a «resident» program that can’t really be swapped out and eats up ram. With only 4mb ram trying to use networking/dial-up networking will usually crash and burn. 8MB works, but is a headache, and it only starts to feel happy with 12mb.

But without networking, 4mb will let you run most Windows 3.1 applications usually without too much additional speed penalty over 3.1, and 8mb is plenty for Office 95.

Disagree. Best mix was DOS with Desqview, which allowed interrupt-driven, pre-emptive multitasking. With a 386 you also can use virtual 86 mode.

I used that combo for a long time while running a Fidonet bbs. Win3.x and co-operative multitasking was a bad mix because even with a FOSSIL driver you could easily lose data, even if some gurus managed to successfully run a bbs under 3.x.

DV allowed me to even run Win 3.x in it’s own window, but the only thing I really ran regularly was Solitaire.

I purchased Win95 because I knew DV wasn’t going to show any improvement, and OS/2 was going to flop. There was an NT console version of my bbs software which worked as a drop-in over the DOS executable. Worked like a charm.

On the other hand, this was on a 486dx2-66 with 8Mb of ram. In fact I made a special point of buying 4 more megs of ram along with a Creative Labs CD-ROM (2x, woo-hoo!) so the upgrad wouldn’t be so painful. With a 486dx2-66 and 8Mb of ram, the demo video clips which came with 95 ran decently well.

In fact I could run Quake at home while someone was logged on to the bbs. They told me it was easy to know when I was playing as there were regular slow-downs and pauses… No crashes, though!

…It’s been a long time, but I thought you could run 3.x software under 95 pr-emptively as long as you kept each app it its own v86 envelope.

I’ll agree about NT vs. 95. I ran my BBS using NT and do things at the same time without affecting the BBS session online. 95 was a bit of a hack-job IMOHO.

…It’s been a long time, but I thought you could run 3.x software under 95 pr-emptively as long as you kept each app it its own v86 envelope.

Impossible for Win16 processes, they _always_ ran cooperatively in Windows 95/98/ME.
Win32 (including Win32s, which you could run in Windows 3.1x) ran preemptively in Windows 95/98/ME.

Under OS/2, yes, there were two options to run Windows 3.x software:
— start a single Win-OS/2 session, and then start many Windows apps within this session, I think in this case Windows apps shared CPU time cooperating with each other, but at the same time, the entire VDM with Win-OS/2 ran on a preemptive basis
— start each Windows app in its own Win-OS/2 session, in this case it was all preemptive

…It’s been a long time, but I thought you could run 3.x software under 95 pr-emptively as long as you kept each app it its own v86 envelope.

You are thinking of NT. NT could optionally open additional VDMs for 3.1 applications.

There is no 3.1 virtualization in 95 because 95 basically IS 3.1 with a better Win32 subsystem integrated. When a 3.1 application on 95 hoses up, so does everything else.

DesqView much like its antecedent Topview was a cooperative multitasking environment for DesqView and TopView designed applications. On a 386, by default, all DesqView applications were assigned to the same v86 machine. It would have been a bit extreme to fire up an extra v86 session with all the attendant overhead just to run the DesqView notepad.

386DX40 and DX2/66 were released the same year, 1992. I am going from memory of where the best price/performance was at the time, not what was bleeding edge/expensive. Most people did 386DX40 at the time because it was the best deal — the 486/25 and possibly 33 were only marginally faster than the DX40 and a lot more money. (Yes, not counting FPU, just considering gaming…)

As I said, 386DX40 didn’t compete directly with 486DX because the 386 was a budget option, where 486DX was the more high-end option. 486SX was the ‘budget’ offering from Intel (aside from 386DX systems still being sold).
The 386DX40 also came late to the party. A lot of people, including myself, had already upgraded to a 486 (either SX, DX or DX2) by the time they even heard of the 386DX40 being an option (it may have been released in 1992 according to some sources (but no data on which month), but I don’t recall seeing it until much later. 486 was of course a household name by then, since it had been around in various forms since 1989).
Not to mention that price/performance doesn’t mean much if you can afford the more expensive model, and it is considerably faster.
Back in the day, DOOM was one of the games to have, and it seemed to be custom-made for a 486DX2-66 with VLB. A 386DX40 could play the game, but not at full detail/full screen. That’s what made it a budget option. You could play the games, but the experience was far from optimal. You’d only buy it if you couldn’t afford a proper 486 gaming machine.

This is another reason why I dislike the OS/2 2.0 fiasco. By the time Win95 was released, the 386 was almost becoming obsolete. I tend to assume that «IBM/Microsoft» OS/2 2.0 would have been released in late 1991, one year after OS/2 1.3.

Impossible for Win16 processes, they _always_ ran cooperatively in Windows 95/98/ME.
Win32 (including Win32s, which you could run in Windows 3.1x) ran preemptively in Windows 95/98/ME.

Ah, the «Win16Mutex» which made all Win16 code run cooperatively and sometimes was taken even by Win32 code (DirectX for example).

Ah, the «Win16Mutex» which made all Win16 code run cooperatively and sometimes was taken even by Win32 code (DirectX for example).

Yup, and it seems they are bringing back that idea with the new «Game Mode» in Windows 10 Creators Update: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017…fps-boost-of-a-few-percent-with-more-to-come/
When an application is considered to be a ‘game’, other resources and applications will be put on the backburner.