It’s been 30 years since Windows 95 launched. [Ms-Dos5] and [Commodore Z] are celebrating with an epic exhibit at Vintage Computer Festival East 2025. They had no fewer than nine computers — all period-correct machines running versions of Windows 95. The pictures don’t do it justice, so if you are near Wall, NJ, on Sunday, April 5, 2025, definitely go check out this and the rest of the exhibits at VCF.
An exhibit like this isn’t thrown together overnight. [Commodore Z] and [Ms-Dos5] worked for months to assemble the right mix of desktops, laptops, and peripherals to showcase Windows 95. Many of the computers are networked as well – which was no easy task.
One particular Thinkpad 760e required pliers and force to remove a stuck PCMCIA modem card. After a struggle that was ultimately destructive to the card, the pair determined it was stuck due to a sticker that had effectively glued the card into the laptop. As the sticker finally gave up, the card popped itself out of the laptop.
Hardware isn’t the only story of this Windows 95 exhibit. An operating system is software, after all. The team has plenty of software running. Some highlights are Kid Pix, MS-paint, LEGO Island, Full Throttle, Duke Nukem 3D, Word 97, and Space Cadet Pinball, which came with the Plus! expansion pack. There is a huge array of original boxes for Windows 95 software. It’s a nostalgia trip to see software in boxes, especially in all those bright 90’s colors.
The various versions of Windows 95 are also represented. [Ms-Dos5] and [Commodore Z] are running all major versions from Chicago beta 73g to Windows 95 C / OSR2.5.
If you’re old enough to remember it, the Windows 95 launch event was a big deal. Windows 3.0 series was five years old at that point. Millions of people owned PC compatible computers and were ready for something new and flashy, and Windows 95 delivered. Thanks to [Commodore Z] and [Ms-Dos5] keeping this bit of internet history alive.
By the way, its predecessor, Windows 3.1 was released 33 years ago today – on April 6, 1992.
https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_3.1x
Bright 90’s colours and GUI designs that did not rely on having a gazzilion inch ultra super quad HD resolution monitor to scale the interface down to less than 25% of the screen area.
“Rely”, or didn’t have?
Hammerhead drum machine by Bram Bos, ReBirth 338 by Propellerheads, ModPlug Tracker (now known as OpenMPT). I made a lot of music on Windows 95, I could record to wave file but on a 2GB HD I couldnt keep the files for long. I would play Slamscape and Death Drome while my parents shouted at me to turn down the sound lol. Peak 90’s experience, DOS preceded this and having a full OS gave me a feeling of power that later versions of Windows didnt deliver on.
(cough) OS/2 Warp (cough).
Exactly!
Windows ’95 was not a full OS. It was a shell around DOS, just like Windows 3.1. A better shell, no doubt about that. With Windows 98se, it started to become more like a full OS. But it really never was.
Windows NT on the other hand WAS a full OS. But for some reason, Windows NT only came to the masses with Windows XP. Who’se conception was propelled by the failure that was called “Windows ME”.
A “shell”.. Yes, but not just. Windows 3.0 described itself as “Graphical Environment” on the box, which I think is fair.
And that can be more than just a shell, like DOS Shell.
What many laymen don’t realize is that Windows has characteristics of an operating system:
– its own executable format (NE, New Executable)
– its own printer spooling
– its own device drivers (VXD, DRV)
– its own memory managment (uses himem.sys or DPMI for access only)
– its own scheduler (co-operative multitasking, message qeue)
– its own 386 virtual machine monitor (like EMM386)
– partial emulation of MS-DOS API, int21h for Windows 3 applications (FastDisk etc)
Windows for Workgroups even has a protected-mode network stack and a HDD cache
If both the native HDD Cache and HDD driver (aka FastDisk) is activated, WfW nolonger calls DOS most of the time.
It’s then running on its own, basically.
It sort of qualifies as a Network Operating System, thus.
Windows 9x has the Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) as its heart.
It’s thus structly not running “on DOS”, but under DOS.
During start-up, Windows 9x moves DOS into a separate V86 machine.
Windows 9x is basically an hyper visor, a virtual machine monitor.
It needs DOS, but has it under control. Thanks to V86 mode.
Correction, Windows 9x calls it Virtual Machine Manager.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_9x#Virtual_Machine_Manager
Also notable environments among others were GEM and GEOS, I think.
They had their own applications, too, but I’m not sure if they had their own executable format, too.
You know, their own version of “exe” files, with special headers.
DESQView/X could run Windows 3.1 in a window, but also ported/re-compiled X11 applications.
Normal DESQView had its DESQView API and support for running special accessories, but I’m not exactly if it was that special. 🤷♂️
EMM386.exe was a memory manager not virtual machine. EMM = extended memory manager. It was itself a memory resident software. Computers had conventional memory of 640KB then some could extend ram using modules but needed a memory manager to be utilized. It would be loaded into conventional memory if I remember right. If you configured everything right you can load it into the Upper Memory Block (UMB) using himem.sys.
“prehiperals”? Hardware from before it was cool?
Thanks! Fixed, although reluctantly. That was a pretty nice typo.
Damn, I’m old…
It was a sad day. Windows NT was a flop when it was marketed as the next desktop, OS/2 was showing what a real pre-emptive multitasking OS can do on PC hardware(albeit tough to install on some) and Chicago was thrown together from bits of NT, parts of HP NewWave and mostly DOS can with millions in marketing and tech rag marking dollars spent.
Anyone who had used UNIX at the universities or OS/2 knew Windows 95 was the computer industry’s version of a McDonalds hamburger. It looked the part and filled a space but it was not even close to being good unless you didn’t know better.
Windows 95 delivered a simple but effective solution to the average user. It had a friendly user environment, setting up new hardware and software was a breeze (compared to alternatives at the time.) Just like the McDonalds hamburger, it was cheap, hastily put together and not very good compared to other options. None of those reasons ever stopped people coming back again and again for more, however. There’s good and then there’s “good”.
What stops people from going back is experiencing something better. This is likely why Microsoft went to such great lengths stopping alternatives from getting preloaded on PCs. BTW, Windows 95 came out at a time when not only were hardware vendors putting their own desktop interfaces on Windows 3.x like Comaq’s Rolladex desktop and HPs New Wave desktop, this little thing called the Internet was available. It turned out that IBM knew the network was important so all the software to use the Internet was bundled with OS/2. The dial up TCP/IP stack and both client and server applications all were available to users out of the box. The TCP/IP stack was an add on from a 3rd party for Win3.x. Windows 95 locked hardware vendors out of changing the desktop and pretty much turned software development at the hardware vendors into driver testing and development departments.
It was “good” only to those who knew no better and were prevented from knowing any better. The hardware vendors would have solved any installation and driver issues but were prevented from doing that.
Now count the huge numbers of people who did experience the alternatives, and still came back.
Which was an excellent choice, since the hardware vendors had no idea of UI/UX design and were constantly trying to break the paradigm.
They would have introduced n + 1 ways to break the system even further, and sneak in “bugs” to trip their competitors while they were at it.
IBM did see the opportunity to own the IP stack on Windows as well – there was a lovely product called the IBM Internet Connection for Windows, which we in IBMs OEM division would take, and customise for certain customers. That way they could ship a custom CD with their paper or magazine, for users to install the ICW on their Windows computer which would automatically prompt the user to sign up for their favourite local ISP. We did some work with a number of Nordic customers like newspapers and so on, that sold a sign-up to Telia and made the local daily newspaper web site the home page. Good business while it lasted ;-)
These “locks” as you call it provide structure. Without something to provide a framework every “solved problem” would have been done with tweaks and hacks, and likely have broken again, and quickly.
Microsoft (as much as it is currently acting like a rhesus monkey addicted to tiktok), provided structure so that hardware would inter-operate, and remain backwards compatible as much as possible.
95B is definitely a milestone. Anybody else remember restarting explorer regularly to get the system back from a lock up?
Dude, no one is claiming 95 was a “serious” OS. But it was fun to use and made the PC vastly easier for home users. It gamed well, was backwards compatible with DOS and was flexible enough to get folks on the early internet.
It was the perfect OS for the time and machines of the era. That’s why folks still like it.
Amiga users might disagree on the last line. ;)
“setting up new hardware and software was a breeze (compared to alternatives at the time.)”
Only if you didn’t know any better. Just out of curiosity: what are those alternatives that you are making a reference to?
You’re missing the entire point. Not “knowing any better” is the EXACT thing that made 95 a big deal. The 90s saw the boom of home users who weren’t tech enthusiasts or electrical engineers or some other professional field. It was just the average Joe who heard that he can track his finances or use this thing called “AOL” to talk to his friend or look up stuff.
You think someone like that is going to survive an OS/2 setup or, god forbid, a Unix based environment with one of a handful of different user environments? Win95 came out of the box ready to go with everything the homegamer needs to be introduced to the world of computing. As a young person myself in the 90s my first experience with a computer was 3.11 and when I saw 95 for the first time I was blown away with how much “better” everything was.
Looking back, it was the cleaner UI, no distinctions between a “file” and a program, they all shared the same visual space. It even had tools to help you get set on-line with wizards that would usually work so long as you had a modem and a phone line.
Context here is key. 95 was never meant for us power users. It was for everyone else.
“As a young person myself in the 90s my first experience with a computer was 3.11 and when I saw 95 for the first time I was blown away with how much “better” everything was.”
Funny how different people are. I was young, too, but had a different taste.
Back in 1995, I always prefered the existing “2D look” of Windows 3.x and NT 3.x.
I also liked the colorful Windows 2.03 that we still had at home in the floppy box in the drawer. It had that 80s vibe.
Windows 95 GUI looked ugly to me, it was the “tomb stone” look.
Because the grey made look everything made out of concrete.
Reminded me of soulless city landscapes with skyscrappers.
Windows 3.1 had a friendly face, by contrast. More innocent, still.
Years later, I realized that the Windows 3.x 2D look also was being shared by OS/2 1.2, 1.3 and 2.0 (beta).
And that the GUI elements were similar to Motif/CDE in Unix world.
You know, Unix graphics workstations. SGI, HP etc.
The kind of stuff on which Donkey Kong Country was rendered, for example.
The color white (background etc) of Windows 3.x was also being used by GEM on PC and Atari ST, the DOS Shell, Macintosh’s System (Mac OS) etc.
That’s why it looked sympathic to me, I guess.
It was a reminiscence of the fading 16-Bit era, which I liked.
The Windows 95 grey rather reminded me of the Playstation, which was the platform of soulless 3D games to me.
I didn’t enjoy the move away from cheerful, hand-crafted 2D sprite art games to soulless, rendered 3D games with a low polygon count.
The Macintosh adopted the tomb stone look with Mac OS 8, I think. That so-called Platinum look..
OS/Warp was grey, too, but it at least was good under the hood.
Anyway, I don’t mean to ruin everyone’s memories here.
I’m just saying that there were users with other opinions, too. Like me.
I know there are people who actually loved Windows 95 and the Playstation. And that’s okay. I guess..
After all, the colorschemes in OSes could be changed.
There were replacement cases for the PSone, too.
So players could swap the ugly grey Playstation chassis to something nice.
“Context here is key. 95 was never meant for us power users. It was for everyone else.”
Absolutely. 100% agree.
It also was useful to migrate existing DOS hardware and software.
What’s positive about Windows 9x was that Windows 3.1x drivers and DOS drivers could be used.
That way, it was possible to link DOS-based networks with Windows-based networks, for example.
Or simply keep using DOS networking software.
That had drawbacks like impaired performance and being limited to 8.3 filenames,
but resources such as printers shared via the old network software could still be used.
Windows 9x also allowed direct hardware access,
which was nice for hardware development in general.
In an electronics lab, security is of secondary importance, after all.
Since It’s an isolated, lonely PC anyway it’s more important to be able to talk to port addresses and parallel port.
That way, ISA prototype cards and small series equipment can be used easily without a need for writing a highly complex VXD/DRV driver.
PC interfaces for Playstation and other game console equipment used parallel port, too.
On DOS (and OS/2) or Windows 3.x/9x they could be accessed, thus.
Windows NT required something like PortTalk library to allow port access, but it wasn’t available in the 90s yet.
“After all, the colorschemes in OSes could be changed.”
Exactly. I always hated the inverse color schemes that emerged in the ’90s, so I used the Windows color-scheme editor to simply make a charcoal-based scheme that looked exactly like today’s “dark” schemes. Back then, you could define a scheme at the system level, and all properly-coded applications would inherit it.
When the general public finally realized that inverse color schemes sucked, Microsoft had REMOVED the scheme editor from Windows. I mean… WTF? And the vaunted Apple GUI NEVER had user-definable color schemes.
So now everyone had to run around and hurriedly slap a hard-coded “dark” theme together at every level. OSes, applications, Web sites… what a mess. This problem was solved more than 30 years ago by every GUI except Apple’s… and then the solution was abandoned.
And measles is making a comeback. People aren’t getting smarter.
Windows NT wasn’t marketed as “the next desktop.” It was marketed as the business OS. It was secure and did networking natively. Unfortunately, it couldn’t be both secure and support DOS (and therefore Win95) hardware drivers. In 1995 Microsoft was not yet in a position to tell all of its customers that every single camera, scanner, sound card, and machine peripheral they ever acquired was now suddenly obsolete all at the same time. They still had actual competition who would make use of that against them. By the time they sunseted 98SE and forced everyone to XP, they did have that market clout and the manufacturers saw it as an opportunity to sell new hardware rather than a burden to redo support for what was already out there. The world’s e-waste landfills burped in contentment, and life went on.
“Unfortunately, it couldn’t be both secure and support DOS (and therefore Win95) hardware drivers.”
Right. That’s were OS/2 Warp 4 was an alternative.
It was a real, preemptive multitasking OS like Windows NT but with a better DOS VM and limited direct hardware access.
Its virtual Windows 3.1 also could use a few device drivers.
The supplied Sound Blaster drivers in Win-OS/2 come to mind.
Like NT, it could run DOS and Windows in separate VMs.
OS/2 Warp 4.x could have been a strong Windows NT 4 competitor in late 90s if it ran ordinary Win32 applications, too.
I mean, it kinda did via Win31+Win32s, but compatibility was limited to well-written Win32 applications.
If only ODIN compatibility layer was available and mature enough in late 90s..
(That’s right, OS/2 Warp can run things like IrfanView or Winamp via ODIN!)
WTF are you talking about?
OS/2 could not support devices that required DOS drivers, at all.
95 ran much much better is there were no DOS mode drivers.
ME got it’s reputation trying to support DOS mode drivers, stank to heaven.
OS/2’s death was it’s limited hardware support.
It was ‘fine’, if you bought a machine built for it.
Was nightmare, it you just tried to install it on random machine and had bad luck.
Wouldn’t tell you it was f’ed, incompatible.
Would try to operate in hardware compatibility mode, like Windows install, but much much worse.
Well for that matter windows 95 version A had major issues that had to be addressed in version B. There wasn’t a ton of places using OS/2, it never really took off like that. It started to then it lost momentum. Sad as it had a ton of potential.
Does it blue screen every four hours? If not it’s not the real experience
Funny I was there yesterday. And saw them at work. One was installing from Floppy disks, which takes real dedication. All in all, it was an impressive setup.
Speaking of floppy disks, Windows 9x is a floppy disk killer.
It writes its own signature on every unprotected floppy.
It thus can damage vintage floppies for DOS PCs or Atari ST or other computers.
It’s really bad for software preservation, in short.
Windows NT or Windows 3.1x don’t do this, only Windows 9x!
https://www.os2museum.com/wp/the-ihc-damage/
There are still 1.0-4.0 PWS unpatched RCE floating around the internet
Imagine running a modern fuzzer against OSR 2.5 browser options and SMB 1.0 with all patches applied(if you can even collect all the patches since nobody made AIO till XP)
TOS, PP, and Comment Policy texts mention nothing about manual comment approval or ambiguous non-profanity filtering..
“We invite you to participate in the Hackaday comment section of each article in a way that is kind and respectful to everyone. Comments should never be hateful, vulgar, obscene, abusive, incoherent, or off-topic.”
We want the comments to be on-topic and/or constructive, and we do what we can to keep them civil. Unfortunately, that means deleting those comments which are not.
If you have a specific issue, please reach out to us: editor@hackaday.com.
It was on-topic.. Somehow it was politically unaligned even though there was nothing political in the comment; I made a comment on personal web server 1.0-4.0 and 95 compatible browsers and it wasn’t allowed to be even posted let alone deleted..
Political correctness is insane here; if you’re going to do it at least have it work right..
Smart money’s on user error. I myself hate all minorities and want to blow up the world, yet this comment got posted.
(No, of course I don’t.)
Maybe you could give the mods enough time to check the moderation queue rather than immediately assume you’re being oppressed.
You can’t celebrate win95 … That’s just crazy.
You can very well celebrate it’s demise, of course. :)
Hey, it gave birth to a whole new generation of computer jokes!
Unlike those who ran air traffic communications at LAX, the folks at VCF are smart to only run the Windows 95 show for 3 days instead of 49 days, 17 hours, 2 minutes and 47.296 seconds.
What a coïncidence! Just last week me and my friends celebrated the 27th anniversary of the DEMISE of Windows ’95!
:P
Celebrating Windows 95. Huh.
Compared to Vista or Windows 10?
Windows 10 had at least 3 major incompatible revisions, bit of a moving target that. When it started life it was Windows 7 with Metro Apps and Internet Explorer. In the middle it adopted new sleep states and hardware, and now it runs chromium and is basically Win11 in all but name.
Be fair.
Compare it to MacOS 6 or 7…
95 was great in comparison.
It didn’t run it’s file system or network stack in a virtualized Z-80 or 6502!
Windows 95 made one thing a bit easier – it drew a line under support for the 286. The one reason that OS/2 saw the light of day, and wasn’t displaced by AIX was that AIX could only run on 386 hardware (and IBM’s RISC engines, of course). Some in the management layers in IBM Boca decided that the 286 had lots of runway still. Others were far less convinced, including the guys from Austin who came to Boca many times to try to convince them not to bother writing a true multitasking OS from scratch, when they already had one.
“Windows 95 made one thing a bit easier – it drew a line under support for the 286.”
Hi, yes, it did. But so did OS/2 2.x, Warp 3 and Windows for Workgroups before.
And the latter supported the 286 merely as a client, at best.
The many commercial DOS memory managers such as
QEMM, 386MAX, CEMM and EMM386 did make users wanting to switch to 386/486 PCs soon enough.
But that being said, I don’t think the 80286 was bad at all. It’s underrated, rather.
Windows 3.1 and OS/2 1.3 demonstrated how capable the 286 was.
And how stable segmented memory was.
Too bad Windows 3.1 didn’t implement virtual memory for 286 Protected-Mode, though.
On bright side, however, it had multimedia support (sound cards, video).
Last but not least, 16-Bit development didn’t stop with Windows 95, but rather 98SE.
16-Bit development tools such as Visual Basic 3 or Borland Pascal 7 were still being used a lot in mid-90s.
Newly written 16-Bit Windows applications detected Windows 95 as version “3.95” and could use advanced features not found on Windows 3.1x.
… just plug it in. It’s gonna say, ‘Hey! I see you’ve plugged in a new device’, and it’s gonna load in the appropriate drivers. You’ll notice that this scanner… wow!
Oh wait, that was Win98, never mind!
I miss the pipes screensaver.
It was a big deal … at the time. But now Linux is way forward for the foreseeable future. Not looking back at Windoze (except maybe for nostalgia purposes) at this address.
Right. And this saddens me. Really, it does. It’s so backwards/stuck.
Back in the 80s and 90s, Unix had a good reputation and was considered a professional, commercial platform.
There had been Minix, too, for the rest of us. Or Xenix.
In early 90s, graphics workstation running on Solaris, HP/UX and other Unices were respectable platforms.
We normal users didn’t own them, but we respected them.
Reading about Unix always had been a joy.
It was an inspiration to learn about the world of the “big iron”.
Then Linux came, “a new star was born” so to say. And with it, so came the teenage thugs.
Now, *nix software nolonger was considered commercial grade software, but freaky half-finished stuff made by kids, then so-called “basement dwellers”.
That’s at least what ordinary people had started to think about, if they had heard GNU/GPL/FOSS/X11.
They also made the false connection Linux equals Unix (Linux=Unix).
Which in hindsight did hurt real Unix or BSD a lot.
*nix nolonger had been associated with mainframes, professionals or university students, but anti-social youngsters from the slums programming garbage.
Open source and the never to be finished software projects were an exact opposite to commercial Unix world, in short.
While the situation nolonger is as bad as it used to be in the 90s, Linux still remains being “freaky”.
It has a cult following, and its followers worship it.
Whenever an alternative operating system emerges,
someone says “don’t bother with it, use Linux!”
Linux here! Linux there! Linux everywhere! 🙄 sigh.