RiderofDark

August 25, 2010 at 6:41pm

I remember my first system, it ran Windows 95. Barely. x486 @ 33MHz, 4MB RAM, 166MB hard drive. I was a wee lad at the time, and did all kinds of tweaking to config.sys and autoexec.bat in order to play some of the games of that era, like Wing Commander: Privateer and some of those Infocom games (the end of Stationfall was so sad. I loved Floyd.)

noobstix

August 25, 2010 at 5:30pm

I remember using Windows 95 for the 4-5 years before going to ME (then XP shortly afterwards).  It was one of the easiest and most compatible OSes out there.  Just about anything could run on it (even DOS games via the kickass "DOS Mode").  I was using some OEM machine that was given to me as a Christmas present with a Pentium I 166 Mhz CPU, 1 MB of VRAM, 16-bit Yamaha sound card, and 16 MB of RAM (I think).  It was a nice computer to have at the time where most games could run on it since they were more CPU-bound (or the fact that they were in 256 colors, 16 million colors, or 16-bit graphics).  I think what ended the lifespan for that machine (which is now in pieces and stored in my brother's old bedroom) was the fact that I wanted to play games like Starsiege without the ginormous hardware lag.

Talcum X

August 25, 2010 at 3:14pm

It's around here somewhere..., ran it for years untill I had a machine that would run 98.  Then I used it only  to install the upgrade copy of 98...now that too is in the pile of software gone by....

Trooper_One

August 25, 2010 at 11:52am

You have to admit, Win95 was quite innovative at the time and it sure took a quantum leap from Win 3.1 and DOS!  Happy Birthday!

someuid

August 25, 2010 at 7:32am

I remember the first time I saw device manager, with every hardware device listed with all of its IRQ, I/O, mem addresses, etc.

I was in heaven.

MleB

August 25, 2010 at 5:12am

I remember the hype surrounding Win95. Alas, I couldn't really afford the really expensive RAM upgrade the OS really needed - taking my Comapq Aero 486sx from 4 to 8 RAM, so I gave it a pass until I later upgraded my notebook and got Win95 included.

Meanwhile, back then who would have foecast that Apple would become a neurotic closed shop Evil Empire, a search engine would be aiming for world domination in, well...everything to do with computing and Microsoft would end up being the company just happy to be ticking along without causing people much grief?

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Asterixx

August 25, 2010 at 3:10am

I remember upgrading my 486 DX2/80 to Win 95 via the 13 floppies. It took freaking forever! I also remember inserting the 13th floppy and having it say "Disk read error". I eventually got it on there though, and at first didn't like Win95 because I felt it took over too much control of my machine (I was used to DOS and being able to run Windows 3.11 only when I wanted to run Windows).  Ahh, the days of having to manually load mouse and CD ROM drivers (or making an autoexec.bat file to do it for you)...

For the record, and to answer the article's question: My first honest-to-goodness PC did not run Win95. It was an 8MHz 8086 with Hercules graphics with an 11" amber monochrome monitor, 1MB of RAM, a 20MB hard drive, 3.5 and 5.25" floppies, and ran DOS 3.3. The system was housed in an enormous "desktop" style housing labeled "Fujitech Jumbo". The programs I most frequently used were Professional Write (easier to use and less demanding resource-wise than Wordperfect), ZSoft Paintbrush (which eventually became MS Paint), and for file maintenance, Xtree.

My first Windows experience came a few years later: MS Windows 286, which was utterly useless. The paint program didn't even have colour, which was unthinkable given that I had paid an extra $600 when I bought that 286 just to have colour graphics!

JDHatman

August 25, 2010 at 2:58am

I remember having Windows 95 version A on 13 floppy disks and using it to upgrade Windows 3.11 to the new "state of the art" operating system.  Sigh, how the days have changed.

canbbb

August 24, 2010 at 9:01pm

I remember trying to install on a laptop when it came out in 95.  The thing is, the laptop only had an external CD drive, and at some point during the install, the driver would switch over from DOS to a then-non-existent driver for external CD drives... so after messing up the laptop mid-install, it could not find the disk anymore.  Back then I did not know you could simply have copied the CD content on the hard drive ! 

So I had to first re-install DOS (geez, 3 minutes of work if that), and two tries later, with same results (the very definition of insanity), I ended up installing a 3rd time from the diskettes.   Good times :-)

I lived in New Zealand back then, and ''we" were quite proud to be the first people on earth to gain access to Win95 (with stores opening at midnight)... maybe Australia had it first actually, but close enough :-) 

pepper_roni

August 24, 2010 at 8:25pm

we got windows 95 around 96, ran strong till 2001 until we finaly got a new pc running snazy XP

JoetheMobster

August 24, 2010 at 6:08pm

I remember the 13 floppies - arg I hated installing from them.  I remember accidentally nuking disk 13 too by accidentally putting too close to unshielded speakers!  I put it down and then looked over quickly as if to say, did I actually do that.....I did and in and instant the disk was toast.  I don't miss those days.  I remember thinking how cool Windows 95 was compared to my previous 3.11 installation though.

BuLLg0d

August 24, 2010 at 5:33pm

Happy birthday Windows 95! I don't miss you. I don't miss supporting you, but I do understand how important you were.  You had a great run. It was fun...

Slugbait

August 24, 2010 at 5:31pm

I had 8 megs of RAM on my IBM PS/1 486SX25, but I was primarily a gamer...so I stuck with PC DOS 6.1 for awhile. When OSR2 was finished, that's the version I grabbed, and installed it on a P5 133 machine...but still did F8 on boot to play games. Heck, there just weren't many games for Win95 back then.

I stuck with OSR2 until a few months after 98SE was released. Then I stuck with 98SE until SP1 for XP was released. Then i stuck with NT5.1 until NT6.1 was released...I always skip the initial OS release for some reason...maybe I hate waiting in line all night cuz they don't serve beer...

Jesterace

August 24, 2010 at 4:54pm

I remember my old AST with a P75 and 8MB of ram with the 850MB Hard drive. Fully loaded with Win95a. Back in 1995 it kicked butt compared to my friends who all had 386 & 486 DOS/Win 3.1 machines.

My favorite version of Win 95 was B, as I didn't really find the intitial release of Win95 to be particularly stable. Win95c I really did not like as it had IE intergrated into the shell and at the time IE4 really did not perform well on that machine. I held onto Win95 until Win98SE came around.