x86 architecture is really amazing when it comes to backwards compatibility. In the future only professional motherboards might be backwards compatible.
fantastic! About the RAM Windows 95 can handle 768MB max without any cheating :) And about the fast CPUs . Only AMD have problems with Windows 95 (System protection error) But Intel do not have this issue and can run 95 without this patch :)
My mind was slightly blown by this setup. It's a pain getting Windows 95 and 3.1 working on period-correct hardware (owner of a P2 and P3). Getting these working using a modern motherboard and CPU is insane. Got so many questions.... Does the same hardware run Windows 11 too? What's the latest era of games you can run on this (guessing limitation will be version of DirectX)? What would Wing Commander make of this (how far can you slow this PC)? DOS benchmarks? Must be some compatibility issues or is this just magic?
Of course it runs Windows 10/11 - I have an RTX card which it is ignored in Windows 3.x/9.x but it takes over in Windows 10. Window 9x games seems no to care much about CPU speed, I think anything is playable as long Windows 95/98/Me was supported officially. DOS is doing great, but NO SOUND. Modern systems do not have sound because PCI sound cards relied on some ISA features that are completely removed since many years in newer motherboards. Only Aureal Vortex PCI cards seems to work in DOS - which is also mind blowing - but not on any AMD platform newer than AM2. I had sound in DOS using a PCI Aurteal Vortex 2 card on a Haswell platform/i7-4790. There are some parallel port sound cards which could deliver sound even on this platform - I will buy one some day.
@@O_mores Yep - the cutoff point for reliable vanilla PCI support was Sandy/Ivy Bridge on Intel, and AM2+ on AMD IIRC. Subsequent chipsets switched to a PCIe->PCI bridge that left out a lot of remapped ISA functionality. Intel also effectively hobbled a lot of DOS memory management by removing Gate A20 support from Haswell onward, though AMD didn’t see fit to do that. However I heard somewhere that the original release of Zen had a number of issues tied to running in real mode… Super impressive video, all of that aside. You should timedemo Quake II’s software renderer here!
You still can do it with a PCI-Express only board, especially if you are planning to run XP. Even for Windows 95/98/Me there are some solutions to use PCI-E cards for sound, video and USB.
PS/2 port is busy with the PS/2 Keyboard, there is only one port and doesn't work with an `Y` type adapter to plug both keyboard and mouse into a single port. I need a PS/2 keyboard mainly for NT 4 and newer - because these OSes do not work with a USB keyboard emulated from BIOS as PS/2.
@@O_mores I have the same problem . my current motherboard have awso only one ps/2 port , and I did not try Y splitter, becouse I do it have one , so you say that may not work :( why it is do you know ?
Hello. I'm trying to do this on some of my machines but I'm not sure if it's the version of W95 i'm using or my lack of driver/config, but I used English version of W95 RTM from WinworldPC and a korean version of w95 i own with both same issues. Can you please share the image of the hard drive you ran w95? if there's no issue with your personal info in it.
Hi, here is the image of C: including the installation kit. pinzaru.ro/Win95A_pack.zip I use this .zip to restore Windows 95 if something goes wrong. Keep in mind this is tuned for my hardware configuration. If you don't go into safe mode you will run into a video driver error, caused by Voodoo 3 drivers. (you can also edit system.ini to avoid that)
@@O_mores I have two machines trying this on, so far not much success. - Dell Precision T3600; Sandybridge Xeon E5-1650, DDR3 ECC-REG 16GB - Dell Precision T5810; Haswell Xeon E5-1650, DDR4 ECC-REG 32GB I'm keep swapping video cards to see what works and they all have two ps2s and serial too. On the 3600 I never got dos-based windows booting. On the 5810 I got 98SE and ME booting, but it 'only' booted. The display output is garbled (tried multiple, 8600gt, gtx670, gtx980). The PS2 mouse and usb mouse 'work', they do make the cursor move but even a slight movement makes the cursor warp to random positions and click randomly (the mouse isn't broken) and the serial mouse i connected doesn't work (does under other os'es). I use a 1920x1080 monitor daily but i tried it on 1024x768 and 1280x1024 with hdmi, dvi, rgb and the results were the same. I'll try a bit more, I guess. As they all have a PCI slot I should be able to grab a supported pci gpu but the 8600 'should' theoretically work with unofficial drivers, and moreover, I need to do international shipping to get those cards :D (Have some AGP cards lying around.. Maybe grab a converter board?)
@@user-no3bt4rs2v On that Sandy Bridge configuration it should work. I had an HP with C200 workstation chipset (Z77 equivalent) and Ivy Bridge CPU and it worked perfectly. Try this trick with your mouse: www.pinzaru.ro/7684/windows-98-episodul-cu-mouse-ul/2/
I had NO IDEA you could run windows 3.x or 95 on modern hardware like this. Mind blowing
x86 architecture is really amazing when it comes to backwards compatibility. In the future only professional motherboards might be backwards compatible.
@@O_mores One of it's many strengths over the newfangled RISC architectures.
that boot up sound theme just shove shivers down to my spine, earned a sub!
fantastic! About the RAM Windows 95 can handle 768MB max without any cheating :)
And about the fast CPUs . Only AMD have problems with Windows 95 (System protection error) But Intel do not have this issue and can run 95 without this patch
:)
My mind was slightly blown by this setup. It's a pain getting Windows 95 and 3.1 working on period-correct hardware (owner of a P2 and P3). Getting these working using a modern motherboard and CPU is insane. Got so many questions....
Does the same hardware run Windows 11 too? What's the latest era of games you can run on this (guessing limitation will be version of DirectX)? What would Wing Commander make of this (how far can you slow this PC)? DOS benchmarks? Must be some compatibility issues or is this just magic?
Of course it runs Windows 10/11 - I have an RTX card which it is ignored in Windows 3.x/9.x but it takes over in Windows 10. Window 9x games seems no to care much about CPU speed, I think anything is playable as long Windows 95/98/Me was supported officially.
DOS is doing great, but NO SOUND. Modern systems do not have sound because PCI sound cards relied on some ISA features that are completely removed since many years in newer motherboards. Only Aureal Vortex PCI cards seems to work in DOS - which is also mind blowing - but not on any AMD platform newer than AM2. I had sound in DOS using a PCI Aurteal Vortex 2 card on a Haswell platform/i7-4790.
There are some parallel port sound cards which could deliver sound even on this platform - I will buy one some day.
@@O_mores it's an impressive build.
@@O_mores Yep - the cutoff point for reliable vanilla PCI support was Sandy/Ivy Bridge on Intel, and AM2+ on AMD IIRC. Subsequent chipsets switched to a PCIe->PCI bridge that left out a lot of remapped ISA functionality. Intel also effectively hobbled a lot of DOS memory management by removing Gate A20 support from Haswell onward, though AMD didn’t see fit to do that. However I heard somewhere that the original release of Zen had a number of issues tied to running in real mode…
Super impressive video, all of that aside. You should timedemo Quake II’s software renderer here!
great video. I got a 5950x was thinking about something like this with xp,but I need a board with pci.
You still can do it with a PCI-Express only board, especially if you are planning to run XP. Even for Windows 95/98/Me there are some solutions to use PCI-E cards for sound, video and USB.
That boot time 😮
There might be even some room for improvment. Now I m using the SSD in DOS mode, but it can be connected as a SCSI device with proper drivers.
Haha that's sick
why serial for the mouse, do not have any PS/2 ports ?
PS/2 port is busy with the PS/2 Keyboard, there is only one port and doesn't work with an `Y` type adapter to plug both keyboard and mouse into a single port. I need a PS/2 keyboard mainly for NT 4 and newer - because these OSes do not work with a USB keyboard emulated from BIOS as PS/2.
@@O_mores I have the same problem . my current motherboard have awso only one ps/2 port , and I did not try Y splitter, becouse I do it have one , so you say that may not work :( why it is do you know ?
how did you get passed the iox.vxd issue in rev-a?
AFAIK Windows 95A doesn't have any issues with CPU speed. It's way simpler to install than OSR2.
Hello. I'm trying to do this on some of my machines but I'm not sure if it's the version of W95 i'm using or my lack of driver/config, but I used English version of W95 RTM from WinworldPC and a korean version of w95 i own with both same issues.
Can you please share the image of the hard drive you ran w95? if there's no issue with your personal info in it.
Hi, here is the image of C: including the installation kit. pinzaru.ro/Win95A_pack.zip I use this .zip to restore Windows 95 if something goes wrong. Keep in mind this is tuned for my hardware configuration. If you don't go into safe mode you will run into a video driver error, caused by Voodoo 3 drivers. (you can also edit system.ini to avoid that)
@@O_mores Wow... Thanks a lot! I'll let you know if I succeed :D
@@user-no3bt4rs2v What is your hardware configuration?
@@O_mores I have two machines trying this on, so far not much success.
- Dell Precision T3600; Sandybridge Xeon E5-1650, DDR3 ECC-REG 16GB
- Dell Precision T5810; Haswell Xeon E5-1650, DDR4 ECC-REG 32GB
I'm keep swapping video cards to see what works and they all have two ps2s and serial too.
On the 3600 I never got dos-based windows booting. On the 5810 I got 98SE and ME booting, but it 'only' booted. The display output is garbled (tried multiple, 8600gt, gtx670, gtx980). The PS2 mouse and usb mouse 'work', they do make the cursor move but even a slight movement makes the cursor warp to random positions and click randomly (the mouse isn't broken) and the serial mouse i connected doesn't work (does under other os'es). I use a 1920x1080 monitor daily but i tried it on 1024x768 and 1280x1024 with hdmi, dvi, rgb and the results were the same.
I'll try a bit more, I guess. As they all have a PCI slot I should be able to grab a supported pci gpu but the 8600 'should' theoretically work with unofficial drivers, and moreover, I need to do international shipping to get those cards :D (Have some AGP cards lying around.. Maybe grab a converter board?)
@@user-no3bt4rs2v On that Sandy Bridge configuration it should work. I had an HP with C200 workstation chipset (Z77 equivalent) and Ivy Bridge CPU and it worked perfectly. Try this trick with your mouse: www.pinzaru.ro/7684/windows-98-episodul-cu-mouse-ul/2/