Browsing the internet on Windows 95

[nkeck72]

I have managed to get a Windows 95 computer together and get it to browse the internet, and also to post here on the EEVBlog forum (I made this post in Win95). It currently does not have a case, it is just the board with all the parts laying askew with power supply wires and ribbon cables going everywhere. I will post a picture when I can.

Here's the hardware:
Pentium 166 MHz with MMX
128 MB RAM
3 GB Hard disk
Two 1.44MB floppy disk drives
4x CD-ROM drive
ESS 1868 (SBPro compatible) ISA sound card
Kingston KNE20T PnP ISA network card (10 Mbps only)
Trident PCI SVGA card (256 colours at 1024x768)
Random AT power supply I happened to have

The browser I am using is IE (I hope to change that) and while I wanted to be able to use the base IE 3.0 that came on my WIN95b CD, I ended up updating to IE 5.5 SP2 because that is the last version on Windows 95 and also the oldest version to display modern webpages in a semi-sane manner. Attached is a nice screenshot of my desktop on a sharp CRT monitor from Gateway (in 1024x768).

It also came with 20 free hours of AOL, which brings back some memories even if I don't currently have a modem installed.

Anyways, I'm off to install SimCity 2000!

[james_s]

I remember browsing the web quite comfortably on a 486-33 running Win95. The modern internet is so bloated it slows to a crawl on machines as new as a Penitum4.

[SeanB]

Hard drive is way too big, you need a 320M hard drive for Win95, it will fit all on there. Really big was a 800M hard drive, and if you really splurged you got a 1002M massive one.

Built a few machines assembly line style for that, and after the second streamlined the process by removing the biggest bottleneck, which was installing Windows using the installer. Just used Ghost, and then did a quick regedit to enter the serial numbers into the right places in the registry. was around a hour of time per machine saved there, the copy was just long enough to unbox the parts for the machine, assemble it and then put the new drive in it and set it up. Then while the next drive was cloning I would move it and put it with the user, complete with brand new 14in CRT colour monitor, keyboard and mouse. Old machine was placed in the box, along with the mono monitor, and brought back.

[shteii01]

What you really need is the USB Floppy Emulator where usb stick would be seen as a 1000 floppy disks.  Something like this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/3-5inch-USB-External-SSD-1-44M-Floppy-Drive-Emulator-for-Control-Equipment-/382020187746?hash=item58f22d7662:g:rqkAAOSwjDZYlKRC

[RGB255_0_0]

166MHz no doubt flies on Windows 95. I was using a P75 Packard Bell until 2001 and then built a AMD Duron system with a heatsink that used a Delta 40mm fan and everyone in my house wanted to destroy it due to the noise 

[Red Squirrel]

Fun stuff.  It's great when a site actually still works on something that old.  IMO I hate today's "modern" design, so to me if a site works in something that old it's a good test of it's quality.

The first machine I ever used was a 486 with win3.1, would be fun to play around with such hardware sometime, I should see what I can find on ebay and such.  Not something I'd really want to spend much money on though.  I played with win95 too, but our first actual family computer was a P3 with win98.  Then my first self built machine was an AMD 2000+ with win2k.  Then some 2000+ era AMD computers after that, like 2400 etc.  3200 maybe? I forget the succession I took, but they all had win2k, still my favourite OS to this day.   Need to fire up one of those old beasts one of these days. I still have some hardware lying around.

[mariush]

If you're curious, you could download Firefox 2.0 and try it out : https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/  (scroll down to 2.0.0.#)

You'll need to install some things before installing Firefox (some libraries and Winsock 2) and then trick the installer into thinking you're using Windows 98 by editing a couple of registry keys (you should be able to revert the edits after install)  ... here's a full "tutorial" : http://sdfox7.com/win95/firefox.htm

[Zero999]

Hard drive is way too big, you need a 320M hard drive for Win95, it will fit all on there. Really big was a 800M hard drive, and if you really splurged you got a 1002M massive one.

What about the RAM? 128MB would have also been a lot for Windows 95. 16MB would have been more typical back then.

[Gyro]

No, when I bought my first 386sx PC with Win 3.1 the offerings were 52 or 105MB. They were bigger by the time Win95 turned up.

[SeanB]

Still had the box of disks a while ago, but tossed them out after a cleanup, saw no need to keep them. found I still had a few Win98 shrinkwraps around, still sealed, just missing the COA sticker. I guess I did not use all of them as cup coasters. Nice with that hologram on them.

[Ian.M]

You could also try K-Meleon 1.6.  Its lighter weight than Firefox 2.0 as it uses native Windows code for the U.I with the Mozilla (Firefox) rendering engine.  See the release notes at http://kmeleonbrowser.org/wiki/ReleaseNotes16.

System Requirements
    *  Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows 2003 Server fully supported. Windows 95, 98, 98SE, ME, Windows NT 4.0 generally supported with updated Microsoft libraries.
    * 32 MB RAM minimum recommended.
    * 6 MB of free hard drive space for download. 18 MB of free hard disk space for full installation.

I still use a heavily locked down copy of it as my preferred daily browser.  You can extend it with versions of NoScript and  AdBlockPlus compatible with it to rip most of the crippling crud out of the pages, and there's GreaseMeleon to let you write user scripts to patch around its deficiencies for specific sites.

[james_s]

I think he's talking about RAM. 4MB was typical when Win95 came out, 8MB was getting more common, 16MB was high end. 4MB was not really enough and Win95 got a reputation for being slow initially until hardware caught up. Hard rives in the 170MB to 340MB range were common, 1GB drives were available but cost around $1200. A bit later in the lifecycle a Pentium 133 with 32MB of RAM and a 540MB hard drive was a real nice Win95 machine.

I still remember being blown away by the performance when I helped a friend build a Pentium 100, we fired up Doom and I'd never seen such a smooth framerate with the settings cranked to max.

[Gyro]

Ah yes, you're right (after reading back a way). Yes 4M or 8M RAM was standard / luxury for Win3.1. So would have been the entry level for Win95.

[james_s]

We had only 2M RAM on a 386sx-16 running Win 3.1, eventually upgraded to 4M and it was still slow but it ran. Even had a CR-ROM drive and Sound Blaster in that machine eventually, 40MB hard drive was always on the brink of being full.

[Gyro]

Well I was a fairly late adopter of Win 3.1 - I was running RT11 on a home built PDP11-23 up till then.  Edit: I do remember the soundblaster with proprietary interface 2x Creative CD reader though.

[shteii01]

Firefox 2 has been mentioned... I wonder why original Netscape has not been mentioned.  I would think for Win95/98 machine Netscape would run just fine since it is native to that environment.

[Kilrah]

My first machine was a P133 with I believe 16MB RAM and... a disproportionate 8GB drive, on Win95 of course.

Thing is I built it out of components gathered for free from several people and friends who were discarding them after a few years of use so things had progressed, and the hard drive was the only thing I actually had to buy because everybody was keeping theirs. Went with the biggest I could afford with the same intention of keeping it over a few upgrades which I did, and since it was the only part I had to shell out for I could afford the I believe $350 or so at the time.

I later upgraded to 96MB RAM I believe, then swapped the CPU for a P166, then changed the base to to a P2 266 or so, all still with "recycled" parts.

Good on you for the patience of browsing the current web on W95... I have a couple of early 2000s computers (Sony ultraportables) that are already on XP but with pretty low HW specs, and even 256MB RAM is mostly unusable. Even a light browser will use >100-150MB RAM just to run and display a single modern page...

[Vtile]

I have managed to get a Windows 95 computer together and get it to browse the internet, and also to post here on the EEVBlog forum (I made this post in Win95). It currently does not have a case, it is just the board with all the parts laying askew with power supply wires and ribbon cables going everywhere. I will post a picture when I can.

Here's the hardware:
Pentium 166 MHz with MMX
128 MB RAM
3 GB Hard disk
Two 1.44MB floppy disk drives
4x CD-ROM drive
ESS 1868 (SBPro compatible) ISA sound card
Kingston KNE20T PnP ISA network card (10 Mbps only)
Trident PCI SVGA card (256 colours at 1024x768)
Random AT power supply I happened to have

The browser I am using is IE (I hope to change that) and while I wanted to be able to use the base IE 3.0 that came on my WIN95b CD, I ended up updating to IE 5.5 SP2 because that is the last version on Windows 95 and also the oldest version to display modern webpages in a semi-sane manner. Attached is a nice screenshot of my desktop on a sharp CRT monitor from Gateway (in 1024x768).

It also came with 20 free hours of AOL, which brings back some memories even if I don't currently have a modem installed.

Anyways, I'm off to install SimCity 2000!

Cool retrocomputing project. Makes me feel old saying that. Now wash (not flash) those dirty 1.44 floppies.

I remember browsing the web quite comfortably on a 486-33 running Win95. The modern internet is so bloated it slows to a crawl on machines as new as a Penitum4.

Bloating is the name of the game! Lets take one for that. 

PS. I still have all the family and my own PC CPUs in a box as a small collection. Like post stamps kind of. 

[Alex Nikitin]

I am using Dell Inspiron 5000 (Pentium III, 128MB RAM, 12GB HD) with Win 98 on a regular basis as my old PCB CAD, the Boardmaker 2  only runs in DOS with a hardware parallel port for a dongle. Works fine and very quick, though I didn't try to browse the Net (I might try now  ) . Even the battery is still usable.

Cheers

Alex

[Zero999]

I think he's talking about RAM. 4MB was typical when Win95 came out, 8MB was getting more common, 16MB was high end. 4MB was not really enough and Win95 got a reputation for being slow initially until hardware caught up.

Yes. I was talking about the RAM of course. I've updated my post to make it more clear.

The main problem with Windows 95 was it was fine on a fresh install but after a few months of normal use it slowed to a crawl.

The only thing I miss from Windows 95 was the logo, which I thought is much better than the current one.

[Gyro]

I remember when I was attempting to archive my old floppy collection a few years ago, I tried running Word for Windows 2 on my 1.7GHz Pentium M laptop under XP. There was the slightly disconcerting feeling that I couldn't quite swear that the characters only appeared after keys went down and not fractionally before! Curiously it still seemed to do pretty much everything you'd want from a document writing program (minus the perky paperclip of course), just incredibly fast!

I haven't tried seeing if it will still function on Win7 yet.

[james_s]

That perfectly illustrates the challenge software companies have with productivity software, and why they make arbitrary UI changes with each new version and now are pushing toward a rental model. Personally I still use Office 2003 at home and it does absolutely everything I need, and looks much nicer than Office 2016 I have at work.

[Ian.M]

For anyone thinking of resurrecting a Win98 or Win98SE machine, here are a few useful links.
USB mass storage drivers - allows use of thumb drives external hard drives etc. up to the size limit for FAT32 for the O.S. http://www.technical-assistance.co.uk/kb/usbmsd98.php
Kernelex - compatibility layer for running *some* Windows 2000/XP-only applications on Win98/98SE/ME https://sourceforge.net/projects/kernelex/
I used to use it to run Apache.

I also used drivers for DOS mode  USB (mostly for CDROMs and mass storage), and occasionally real MSDOS with 'Microsoft Network Client version 3.0 for MS-DOS' to access fileshares on a Win9x or XP box with the legacy Microsoft NetBEUI protocol installed.  It could also act as a fileserver - rather convenient for getting stuff onto an old PC from a modern one as you could run your preferred GUI file manager, archiving utilities etc. on the modern box and mount the old machine's drives over the network.   

Half the battle with this stuff is knowing the utilities exist and the proper nams for them to find a source for them . . . .

Ive been through Word for Windows 2.0 and Excel 4.0, Office 4.3 (Word 6.0, Excel 5.0), and then Office 97 which I've never felt the need to move on from.   Ever since the Office 2007 .???x file formats were introduced I got by with the file viewers + the Office compatibility pack import/export filters and rarely had any complaints about formatting errors in documents for distribution I exchanged with Office 2010 and higher users.   Office 97 or 2K are stable and get the job done without getting in the way.  Great software from before the Office team jumped the shark.

[timb]

We had only 2M RAM on a 386sx-16 running Win 3.1, eventually upgraded to 4M and it was still slow but it ran. Even had a CR-ROM drive and Sound Blaster in that machine eventually, 40MB hard drive was always on the brink of being full.

Yes, 2MB of RAM was the standard configuration, with 8MB being high end. People forget, but RAM prices were exorbitantly expensive in the 90's. In early 1994 RAM was about $50/MB. I remember when we upgraded our first computer, a 386SX, to 8MB *and* added a math co-processor; MS Flight Simulator really ran fast then!

I think that system had an 80MB hard drive. I remember we had to compress it with Drive Space to install Flight Simulator, which came on a dozen floppies.

When I got my own computer in 1995, a 486DX2, it had 16MB of RAM and a 500MB hard drive, man, I thought it was the fastest thing in the world. Doom *really* ran smooth on her.

Then 1996 brought us hardware 3D acceleration and Quake. Ah, good times. Good times.

[james_s]

I remember drooling over the 486DX2-66 systems, I worked out at the time my dream PC would cost about $10k which was WAY more than I could afford.

I still remember the first time I saw Quake on a Voodoo 3D card, I was blown away by the silky smooth framerate and beautiful texture mapped graphics.

[Zero999]

I remember when I was attempting to archive my old floppy collection a few years ago, I tried running Word for Windows 2 on my 1.7GHz Pentium M laptop under XP. There was the slightly disconcerting feeling that I couldn't quite swear that the characters only appeared after keys went down and not fractionally before! Curiously it still seemed to do pretty much everything you'd want from a document writing program (minus the perky paperclip of course), just incredibly fast!

Word processors have been over-featured for years. Unfortunately Microsoft have turned to changing the GUI with newer version, just to make it look different so they can continue to sell it. I don't know if Word 2 will be able to handle large documents containing Unicode text though.

[digsys]

Ahhhhh memories of sitting in a back room, piled high with XTs, and the very first NeATs, removing core logic ICs and fitting IC sockets ... firing up the CRO (no digital),
and trying out F series replacements to get the MAX speed from the MB. 4.77MHz > 6.0MHz earned $200+ extra for the MB (NO CPU or memory), > 8.0MHz earned $500+
and on rare occasions, just under 10.0MHz earned $800+++ Things got hot, but as long as it held together for 15 mins, it was a pass :-)
We had no shortage of customers ! I'd also come back from the airport with several MB of ICs from USA, often worth many $1,000s !!

[VK3DRB]

You blokes are all youngsters. My first computer was one a System-80. Here is an excellent tear down and history...



The speaker is wrong about 1981. The machine came out in 1979. I bought mine in September 1979. It cost me $695, today's equivalent of about $6,000. The Dick Smith System-80 was associated with organised crime (embezzlement and theft of intellectual property) and it mysteriously and suddenly disappeared from the market one day. The machine was poorly designed, poorly manufactured, poorly supported by Dick Smith. But it was a lot of fun to own, program and use.

I could not afford a monochrome monitor at the time, so I used a GAC black and white TV and tapped into its video amplifier via some co-ax and a DC blocking capacitor. The greatest game was without doubt Sargon II, an innovative graphical chess game, written by the absolute genius husband and wife team: Dan and Kathy Spracklen.

[steve30]

I got a Windows 95 machine a few years ago, a Toshiba Libretto 100CT. I promptly set it up to connect to my network and browse the web. I use Opera 9, which works fine for most purposes.

Its a little short on memory with only 32MB, but I just about get away with it.

Edit: added photo.

[unitedatoms]

I think this belongs here.
Someone won takeaway Keysight scope and intsalled DOOM.
https://www.reddit.com/r/electronics/comments/arjq6b/i_hacked_my_keysight_scope_to_play_doom/

I did not expect that Keysight is Windows CE. Thought it was some Linux or Android. I dont envy the poor soul in Keysight who has to write OS drivers for that platform, brrr.

[Mr. Scram]

I think this belongs here.
Someone won takeaway Keysight scope and intsalled DOOM.
https://www.reddit.com/r/electronics/comments/arjq6b/i_hacked_my_keysight_scope_to_play_doom/

I did not expect that Keysight is Windows CE. Thought it was some Linux or Android. I dont envy the poor soul in Keysight who has to write OS drivers for that platform, brrr.

Keysight has been using Windows CE for a long time. It seems they've just started releasing devices with Linux, apparently due to licensing issues and CE being phased out. I'm not sure what their plan is for existing CE lines and products, as Microsoft will simply stop selling licenses at some point.

[unitedatoms]

... as Microsoft will simply stop selling licenses at some point.

I am surprised that in year 2019 of our savior someone is making things with Windows CE, and the thing is in my possession. Shocking

[nick_d]

I am interested to hear about the IE 5.5SP2.

I've tried to use Windows XP a number of times for things like compiling 32-bit applications, the browser is always totally broken though. It can't view https:// websites, and I see similar breakage on a Windows 98 install that I use for running a certain DOS in-system-programmer tool.

This made me kind of grumpy and I tried older versions of Chromium etc to no avail. I hadn't tried Firefox 2. However, I did download some crap freeware thing that is at least able to browse. I think the underlying issue is the change from 128 bit to 384 bit encryption or whatever. So it's not actually that the browser is broken, but rather that the websites have upgraded themselves in a way that breaks browsing with older browsers.

Does IE 5.5SP2 allow to view https:// websites reliably?

cheers, Nick

[IanMacdonald]

You used to be able to browse well enough with Firefox on 95. Not sure at which version they stopped supporting that platform though. My guess is that there are none which would support CSS3, which would leave most modern sites as a mess. 

As for today's Web, I really think it's become so bad as to be worse than things were 20 years ago. The objective just seems to be to BLAST a huge banner image in your face which usually has zero relevance to site content, with little or no actual information on the page. Then there are the sites where this stupid banner fills the whole screen, but the actual info is accessed by scrolling down. Only, there is no way of knowing that, so you assume the page is information-less. Every second site has one of those slide-to-the-side banners which just makes you want to either scroll it offscreen or leave the page as quickly as possible. Most of them won't scroll smoothly, progress down the page is in leaps and jerks.  'Earthquaking' pages are another major nuisance, where it takes some time for the text to stop shifting position after the page loads. Then, there's the popups. Don't even get me started on those.

I blame WordPress for a lot of this; it's created a situation  where there are no original designs any more, just clones of the few most popular stock themes. Hence all sites having that same set of really annoying features.

[nkeck72]

nick_d, IE 5.5 does not view https:// at all, but Firefox seems to have little or no issue at all. Oddly enough, Firefox seems to be reporting 128-bit encryption.

Envoyé de mon SM-G950U en utilisant Tapatalk

[james_s]

IMHO without Adblock the modern internet is unusable. I didn't mind banner ads but once popups and sound playing ads appeared I started blocking everything and never looked back. Marketing dug their own grave. Some sites now block users running Adblock. I click reload a few times to burn some bandwidth then go elsewhere.

[nkeck72]

In an ironic twist, the operating system and browser's complete inability to display google ads due to lack of HTML5 or Flash acts as its own adblock. 

In the last little bit since I posted this, the Windows 95 machine is still running strong with no real issues. It's still not got a case, but it works a treat and on a few modern websites I can still even do stuff with no real hiccups at all.

I also have begun to use a Windows 98 machine for a lot of things, as I've started to realize that most of what I use a computer for nowadays will work just fine on computers of my youth. That Windows 98 machine is built more for performance and as a gaming machine (runs Half-Life at a solid 60 fps no issue), but it still works for internet browsing as well.

As for the comments about word, well... I use Office 98, even on my Windows 7 laptop. No complaints, and if I need to edit docx I use LibreOffice, as I like its interface far better than the MS ribbon interface or whatever from Office 2010.

Also, it's been a long time since I've graced my nose with the scent of the dust burning off a warm CRT monitor. I recently got one from roughly 1998 that I'm using with said Windows 98 machine, and it makes the setup look all the better and definitely is a conversation starter. It had only a few hours on it when I got it secondhand in December and the only work it needed done were some slight tweaks on the focus control. It looks nice and sharp now and performs very well.

Glad I could foster some memories for some people and it's cool to see that I'm not totally insane for still using this kind of thing on the modern internet. 

[wilfred]

I blame WordPress for a lot of this; it's created a situation  where there are no original designs any more, just clones of the few most popular stock themes. Hence all sites having that same set of really annoying features.

But you also get the content these people produce because they don't need to spend time on the presentation. So you could equally blame wordpress for liberating content producers from technical mumbo-jumbo.