Windows 95. Seriously

Interesting thread. I'm not that old but apparently this one is going to make me feel that way.

So first and foremost, you're liking using Windows 95 OSR2 version C, if it has a copyright of 1998. Basically OSR2 was the first version of Windows with USB support.

What you need to know is that Windows 95 has a max drive limit of 32GB when formatted with FAT32.
https://www.hardwaresecrets.com/hard-disk-drives-capacity-limits/5/

The reason for that jumper that says >32GB is so that you can operate the drive at full capacity, or operate the drive in compatibility mode by setting it to only display <32GB. In order for it to work with Windows 95, you want to limit the drive size to 32GB. Keep in mind an average HDD size was Windows 95 was released was around 400MB, and even 20GB HDDs we're really a thing most people had until the turn of the century.

The jumpers in either picture I saw are not set correctly at all. What you really want to do is just set the Hard drive to master, but also set it so that the drive is limited to <32GB.

Let me explain the settings first, then I'll explain where you should be putting jumpers on the drive.


The CS, SL, MA stands for:

Cable Select
SLave
MAster

In that order. Master means it's the primary drive on the chain, slave means it's the secondary drive on the chain. Cable Select is technically an option that should autodetect which one of the two positions on the chain it's in, and set it accordingly. This setting was generally garbage and most people avoided using it because it can be inconsistent. So that said the "master" position on the cable is always the very end of the cable, and the slave is the one in the middle. Technically you can flip the cable either direction, but they were made so that the longer distance between connectors was supposed to be between the motherboard and the slave. The Red stripe is to indicate which side is Pin 1.

So the simplest method it to just plug the HDD into the end port on the cable, and set it for Master. But in order to understand the diagram, you need to look at the picture. The thing on the left of the picture is supposed to represent the molex connector for power, and the thing on the right is the IDE cable. So when setting your jumpers you need to flip the drive upside down in order to match the picture in the middle. Some drives used to be nice and actually have CS, SL, MA engraved on the bottom, but that's probably not the case on your drive.

View attachment 219338




Notice how I flipped the drive upside down so it matches the label? The column you want to focus on is the one in green. The thing I'm not entirely sure on is the descriptions of capacities. The first of the 3 seems like it would just be normal operation for the drive, but it's possible it did have that other jumper off to the side for a larger drive like this one. The center one would be the correct option for using in a newer pc, but in your case you want to limit drive capacity. I THINK that the 3rd option is what would do that, take a >32GB drive and cap it at 32GB. 95 won't handle more than this, so you don't want to go over 32GB. The easiest way to tell you have it right is plug it into a newer pc, and then see if it's limited in size.

Old Windows was also notoriously bad at formatting anything that already had data on it, and it would not like to do it if it couldn't recognize the partition on it. (Like EXT3 or NTFS) What you should do is completely remove all partitions from the drive on another pc, so the drive is blank. Then boot with your floppy disk, and partition and format the drive as FAT32.


The screen you're seeing about not reading C is fairly common when you attempt to format the disk with other utilities. Even Windows XP can sometimes make incompatible drives that Windows 95 couldn't read. (XP can format up to 137GB in FAT32 without service packs, I think you can hit the 2TB FAT32 limit otherwise) If a boot disk and fdisk doesn't work, then something probably isn't configured correctly. You need to fdisk, create 1 primary partition, set the partition as active, then run a format C: so the drive is actually formatted.


The funny thing about this thread is everyone's nostalga about this stuff. It sounds cool and it would have been neat to keep the stuff laying around, right up until you remember that Windows 95 generally doesn't boot without a boot disk, and a period correct PC (Not a Pentium 2) definitely wasn't booting off a CD. Be glad the system you have has auto detect, because most 486 / 33 mhz machines you'd have to set the CHS (Cylinders, Heads, Sectors) manually in the bios from the data that was on the label. (If you were lucky for it to have that. Otherwise you'd have to try to hunt down that information or stick the drive into another pc that could detect it for you) Back in the 286 days that 40 pin cable wasn't keyed, striped, or had the missing pin blocked out. It was easy to plug the cable in wrong because you didn't know which direction it should be on the drive. I had to drill out that block from newer cables to use on older drives that still had all 40 pins.

The other note about cables, I think you have a genuine 40 pin / wire cable. That meant a maximum of ATA/33 bus interface, or 33MBps. I don't believe that plugging a CD rom drive into that same cable would have an affect on your hard drive, because both can probably operate at the ATA/33 spec. Where you ran into issues was using ATA/66, 100, or 133. You needed both an 80 wire cable and all devices on the chain had to run at the same top speed in order for it to operate at that speed. So an ATA/33 CD Rom drive chained to an ATA/100 HDD would mean the HDD would operate at ATA/33. On your board it's likely all a moot point because the board interface is probably only ATA/33.



One side note, I wouldn't necessarily assume the disk has bad sectors, but because it's >32GB there might be weird issues going on with it's ability to access sectors. I'd probably try limiting the disk first and see if that makes those issues go away. If it works as is great, but if you're seeing errors it might be a compatibility issue and not necessarily an issue on the drive.
Thanks for that outstandkng reply!

i changed the jumpers, Run format and ;
15803548742018814692424345324553.jpg


The number whent down but is still odd looking to me.

Tomorow iam going to try the win95 disk in another pc mabye the disk isnt readable. 4 CD drives and they all come up error.

iam gonna make a fresh boot disk

Try another known working harddrive

Probably going to cry myself to sleep

Thanks for the help everybody!
 
95 came out in 1995. Pentium II 1997. 98 didn’t come out until a year after. So people definitely were running 95 on Pentium II.

Yea I'd say that's accurate. Surprisingly enough Wiki shows all Pentium 2's would have come out before Windows 98. I can't say as I realized that as most people I know running Windows 95 ran it on some type of Pentium at like 100mhz or lower. You could run it on a 486, or if you really didn't want to get anything done it would technically run on a 386. I think the difference is that even though the processors were out, you might not have bought a system with a cutting edge processor. So the people I knew buying their first pcs probably had older models with a newer OS.
 
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Is there a resource conflict between the secondary HDD controller and some other device?

Has the ribbon cable been tested and shown to be good?

How do you have the jumpers set on the CD drive? Are the secondary HDD controller’s settings in BIOS matched to the capability of the CD drive?

Are you sure the CD drives are IDE? I think there was a proprietary interface in those days that looked like IDE, but wasn’t.
 
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Yea I'd say that's accurate. Surprisingly enough Wiki shows all Pentium 2's would have come out before Windows 98. I can't say as I realized that as most people I know running Windows 95 ran it on some type of Pentium at like 100mhz or lower. You could run it on a 486, or if you really didn't want to get anything done it would technically run on a 386. I think the difference is that even though the processors were out, you might not have bought a system with a cutting edge processor. So the people I knew buying their first pcs probably had older models with a newer OS.

I was one of the fools that went 75 miles to Dallas on day three to get it for my 386DX 40 and 4MB of RAM only to find out my 340MB hard drive was too small.
 
Heres a development! View attachment 219279


itll prolly take 168 years for it to format a 80g hard drive. iam leaving it work for the night


Thanks very much! ill update tomorow

i appreciate all the help big time

I meant to pop in here last night and now regret it after seeing this lol.

I was going to ask why you were running format from within C and not from A and also not giving it any parameters.
 
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So spent all day under my truck changing ball joints and a wheel bearing, Just popping in to say the disk works


Plays the demos and everything

20200130_193700.jpg
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Also a shot of nostalgia. Feels good man


And the original space cadet before XP



And ultimate doom

 
Yea I'd say that's accurate. Surprisingly enough Wiki shows all Pentium 2's would have come out before Windows 98. I can't say as I realized that as most people I know running Windows 95 ran it on some type of Pentium at like 100mhz or lower. You could run it on a 486, or if you really didn't want to get anything done it would technically run on a 386. I think the difference is that even though the processors were out, you might not have bought a system with a cutting edge processor. So the people I knew buying their first pcs probably had older models with a newer OS.

Reading stuff like this makes me miss those computing days. Yes, I like the fact that stuff is far more stable, capable and faster today but, things back then were more enjoyable at times, more exciting, since stuff was new and unheard of before and fun. (OS/2 Warp, Amiga 500, Windows 95, VLBus Graphics adapters, 64MB of ram, 10GB Hard drives that booted OS/2 in 30 seconds and so on.
 
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Reading stuff like this makes me miss those computing days. Yes, I like the fact that stuff is far more stable, capable and faster today but, things back then were more enjoyable at times, more exciting, since stuff was new and unheard of before and fun. (OS/2 Warp, Amiga 500, Windows 95, VLBus Graphics adapters, 64MB of ram, 10GB Hard drives that booted OS/2 in 30 seconds and so on.

The first version I messed with was Redhat 4.2 (1997). Even with my job, when I think of all the versions of AIX that I've worked with and seen come and go (4.3, 5.1, 5.3, 6.1 and soon to 7.1) it makes me feel really old. And I'm only 36...
 
I re read all the replys and thank you everyone for all the knowledge!

At this point iam putting it on the back burner because more projects have come up. i will be getting back into it soon but i cant rush this

Rushing is my downfall, i end up over spending getting frustrated and breaking things. Iam planning on getting a new 5g hard drive or ide to sd, and a better disk reader

in the last week i got 6 untested Snes`es and 3 game boys iam backlighting. Need to keep hobbies on a budget and i blew the budget big time for awhile
20200131_171147.jpg
 
i think iam going to order this

it seys 40pin ide, is that correct?
Screenshot_20200131-172507_Samsung Internet.jpg
 
Yes, IDE is 40 pins for normal 3.5" hdds. That looks like it should be the right part to emulate a hard drive using SD cards.

Laptops that had IDE connectors for their 2.5" drive use 44 pins, because it also includes power in the same cable.
 
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Yes, IDE is 40 pins for normal 3.5" hdds. That looks like it should be the right part to emulate a hard drive using SD cards.

Laptops that had IDE connectors for their 2.5" drive use 44 pins, because it also includes power in the same cable.
Thanks for clearing that up for me!
 
Glad you got it all sorted out. :) I don't miss those days at all, lol. I love that I can put Windows 10 on a USB flash drive and install it so much faster and easier. No master\slave jumpers to mess with, no IRQ junk. It's so much easier now, lol.

Did you end up needing to install DOS or did the Windows 98 boot disk work? My recollection is that Win 98 SE was the first Windows disc that didn't need a boot disk. But, that's reaching way back. lol Oh, that's another thing I don't miss is re-installing Windows every 6 months to keep it running good. Bleh.
 
I enjoyed the way Windows 95 looked back in the day, since it was a new look at that time.
 
Why are you using Windows 95 on a Pentium II system? Don't you know that you can use Windows XP on it instead, which is alot better. Windows 95 was designed for Older 32-bit computers from around the 386, 486, and first Pentiums below 233 Mhz without MMX. Also, it's rumored that you can get Windows XP installed on a Pentium 63 MHz or 83 Mhz Overdrive compatible Socket 2 or especially Socket 3 system like hardwarecop did on youtube and I almost did except my Amptron DX9700 919 or whatever wouldn't boot to floopy, so i could use CD-ROM to install Windows 98 SE and try to upgrade to Windows XP 32-bit. Keep in mind there is Windows XP 64-bit, but it will only work with the first Pentium 4 that are 64-bit and up though.

Try looking on Ebay or Amazon for Windows XP 32-bit especially Windows XP Pro 32-bit, so you can learn how to use a server with WIndows Server 2003 at least.
 
Why are you using Windows 95 on a Pentium II system? Don't you know that you can use Windows XP on it instead, which is alot better. Windows 95 was designed for Older 32-bit computers from around the 386, 486, and first Pentiums below 233 Mhz without MMX. Also, it's rumored that you can get Windows XP installed on a Pentium 63 MHz or 83 Mhz Overdrive compatible Socket 2 or especially Socket 3 system like hardwarecop did on youtube and I almost did except my Amptron DX9700 919 or whatever wouldn't boot to floopy, so i could use CD-ROM to install Windows 98 SE and try to upgrade to Windows XP 32-bit. Keep in mind there is Windows XP 64-bit, but it will only work with the first Pentium 4 that are 64-bit and up though.

Try looking on Ebay or Amazon for Windows XP 32-bit especially Windows XP Pro 32-bit, so you can learn how to use a server with WIndows Server 2003 at least.

Probably because he already has 95, and it’s period correct for the hardware as already pointed out?

Also, Windows XP 64-bit edition was for IA-64 processors (Itanium), not Pentium 4s (which were not 64-bit until nearly the end of their lives). You’re thinking of Windows XP Professional x64 edition.

Your last sentence makes zero sense. Get a client OS to learn how to use a Server OS?
 
Probably because he already has 95, and it’s period correct for the hardware as already pointed out?

Windows 95 is not period Correct for a Pentium II because when these thing were out Windows 98 was out around that time and the high school I graduated from in 1999 was using Windows NT 3.51 on Pentium II system. Besides Windows XP 32-bit is still better that Window 95 for a Pentium II than Windows 95.

Also, Windows XP 64-bit edition was for IA-64 processors (Itanium), not Pentium 4s (which were not 64-bit until nearly the end of their lives). You’re thinking of Windows XP Professional x64 edition.

No it wasn't just for IA-64 processors because AMD Athlon 64's were out around that time and Intel Pentium D's, which were 64-bit were out not much longer after that and that means there had to be Intel Pentium 4's with EMT64 to support 64-bit around that time and I should know because I was going to get a Pentium D 805 processor before the Core 2 Duo came out as I just happened to be getter Windows XP Pro 32-bit and Windows XP 64-bit to get the free upgrade to WIndows Vista offer around that time. As I distinctly remember the two year college I went to offering free downloads from ELMS a Microsoft Window XP Pro 64-bit exclusively for Itanium and Windows XP Pro 64-bit for everything else 64-bit, which I still have.

Your last sentence makes zero sense. Get a client OS to learn how to use a Server OS?

You make no sense because if he's going to waste his time with Windows 95, which is also a client OS then he might a well try to make an old computer into a server and put Windows NT Server that he could get from winworldpc.com on it to make a game server considering his time could be better spend with a new computer With Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016 if not Windows Server 2019 if it's out yet considering I did see Windows Server 2019 for sale just not the book from Microsoft press. Anyway after all as I said Windows XP Pro 32-bit would be a much better version of Windows to put on a pentium II system as it was Microsoft's dream to complete it from computers that could support and I know it can because I had Windows XP running on plenty of Pentium II and Celeron A systems before, which once again considering he probably could use a higher paying job anyway or might want to start a video game server he would be better off to take this computer and put Windows XP Pro 32-bit and take another old computer and put Windows Server 2003 on it, even if he doesn't exactly need a domain server or a file server considering he would still be better off learning how to do that if he doesn't already know considering he's going to all this trouble to put this Pentium II system.
 
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I re read all the replys and thank you everyone for all the knowledge!

At this point iam putting it on the back burner because more projects have come up. i will be getting back into it soon but i cant rush this

Rushing is my downfall, i end up over spending getting frustrated and breaking things. Iam planning on getting a new 5g hard drive or ide to sd, and a better disk reader

in the last week i got 6 untested Snes`es and 3 game boys iam backlighting. Need to keep hobbies on a budget and i blew the budget big time for awhileView attachment 219833

I know a video that can explain why those Super Nintendo's have yellowed plastic and it's here:



Apparently Nintendo decided to put Bromine in the plastic mixture to make the plastic fire retardent, but it make the plastic turn yellow when exposed to sunlight and this guys video will tell you one of the best ways to remove the yellow. Apparently, those yellowed plastic snes's aren't just turning yellow either according to this guy, but the plastic is actually becoming brittle and will start chipping. Hopefully this won't get me into trouble for getting off topic on this tread either.
 
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<rambling garbage in broken quotes>
Ugh.. didn't realize who was posting. As usual, you're conflating and misremembering things and twisting what is being said to you while trying to make irrelevant points. This thread is about doing something because it can be done, not because it makes sense or is a good use of time. Why is the OP using Win95 on mid-90's hardware? Because he wants to.
 
My company pays me to stay home 6 months a year, My time is plentifull.
Besides, Saying anything about wasting time is irrelevant in 2020 when so many people play video games and watch TV all day
 
Iam building a personal collection of old video games and tech, and a brand new computer running a dos box doesnt fit in the collection
 
My company pays me to stay home 6 months a year, My time is plentifull.
Besides, Saying anything about wasting time is irrelevant in 2020 when so many people play video games and watch TV all day
Is your company hiring?
 
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I know a video that can explain why those Super Nintendo's have yellowed plastic and it's here:



Apparently Nintendo decided to put Bromine in the plastic mixture to make the plastic fire retardent, but it make the plastic turn yellow when exposed to sunlight and this guys video will tell you one of the best ways to remove the yellow. Apparently, those yellowed plastic snes's aren't just turning yellow either according to this guy, but the plastic is actually becoming brittle and will start chipping. Hopefully this won't get me into trouble for getting off topic on this tread either.

its true they are brittle, all the old nintendo products too. Lots of problems restoring gameboys too!
Here is one i rebuilt recently with an LCD screen, it looks so clear in person
 
All the time, Are you in atlantic canada?


I grew up in Atlantic Canada. Crazy. In the military now in Ontario.

Do you need anything for that retro PC? I can't remember without rereading the entire thread.
 
Ontario unfortunately. And not Eastern.
In a bit of an employment rut right now. Decent job, but I dislike it a lot. Not much for options around me either.
ohyeah thats awefull man. i shouldnt say the company pays me to be home, But we can only work in the summer so we work 12-14 hours aday all summer and the company "lays us off" and we get unemployment insurence all winter. I love the time off i get to feel like a human and not a slave for awhile
 
Ontario unfortunately. And not Eastern.
In a bit of an employment rut right now. Decent job, but I dislike it a lot. Not much for options around me either.

Join the military. Most rewarding thing I've done.

I went to college for both electronic repair AND social work and then joined the military. It was the best choice I ever made.
 
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Join the military. Most rewarding thing I've done.

I went to college for both electronic repair AND social work and then joined the military. It was the best choice I ever made.
I looked into it almost ten years ago. The recruiter basically said no we don't need you. Now I'm 36, not sure I'd be a good fit.
 
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can i work from home in alberta?
You can if you beleive you can :) i dont work from home tho
I dont realy work at work either
Join the military. Most rewarding thing I've done.

I went to college for both electronic repair AND social work and then joined the military. It was the best choice I ever made.
Its a great choice for many folks, i respect that career! i know i couldnt do it
 
I looked into it almost ten years ago. The recruiter basically said no we don't need you. Now I'm 36, not sure I'd be a good fit.

I am 36 as well with 15 years under my belt. People of all ages join. When I was on basic training at 21, one of the other guys was 55.
 
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