can you put 95 on an Athlon machine

[Topochicho]

I want to build a multi boot machine with 2000/NT/98/95. I have figured out the logistics to this, but my IT guy says he will only build a 2000/NT/98 machine for me. He said he has tried to put 95 on an athlon system before and it killed the mother board. I know the system in question was using a 700Mhz Athlon (I believe Slot A). I also think the board was an Asus board cause thats all he ever uses.

Has anybody ever had this prob? Or know how to get around?
I need the 95 for testing, cause one big customer still has 95 on many of its laptops.

 

[urbantechie]

Why not? I see no harm. Maybe some special 3DNOW! instructions might not work, but other than that I say give it a go. I'm under the impression all X86 processors will work. (well, not anything before 486 ) And how can Win95 ruin a motherboard?

 

[Duke105]

I wouldn't recommend put Win95 on an Athlon rig. My friend tried putting Win95 on his system using an Asus K7V. It caused installation hell and he didn't have Plug and Play. He upgraded to Win98SE shortly afterward and it solved all of his problems. I would follow the advice of your IT guy.

 

[Doh!]

How can win95 ruin a motherboard? Hmmm... must be a very buggy os.

 

[StanTheMan]

There was a case with some particular athlon motherboard where installing win95 will erase the bios

 

[Topochicho]

StanTheMan: He's kind of a prick and didn't want to explain what the actual symptom was but he took it back to the builders (he buys the machine prebuilt and then installs the OS) and they couldn't get it to work, so it may be that it was killing the bios or something.

 

[Dufusyte]

I'm running a Thunderbird 800 on an MSI K7T Pro with Win95 OSR2 with no problems.

There are several different versions of Win95; the original version used a 16-bit file system, but the later versions used a 32-bit file system. If you're going to use Win95 at all, make sure you have the later version that has the 32-bit file system.

 

[opcenter]

First of all, it matters what motherboard you're putting in there. Theoretically, all of them should work with Windows 95 with a bunch of driver updates and OS patches. If you're using a VIA based board, then you really only need to install the VIA 4-in-1 drivers (make sure you install all of them). If you're using an AMD 750 based board, I believe AMD has a similar solution.

Anyway, yes you should be able to do put 95 on an Athlon board, but it might be a huge pain getting it to work well.

 

[Aboroth]

My workplace installs Windows 95 on all of the new computers because we have more licenses for it than we know what to do with and don't need anything newer. We recently got some Athlon 700MHz systems and I didn't have a problem installing Windows 95 on them.

I think your IT guy is either stupid, lazy or full of BS. You decide.

 

[bill_mr]

I have done this and it is not fun,
dont blame your IT guy/ if you can use win95se
you will never regret what you will be missing

 

[Davegod75]

yep

 

[RSI]

"I'm under the impression all X86 processors will work. (well, not anything before 486)"

Correction, nothing before 386. Windows 95 works perfectly fine on 386s, but not on 286s.

-RSI

 

[urbantechie]

Damn, 386's too!? I would commit suicide if I was running Win95 on a 386!

 

[Petro89]

It depends on the motherboard. The Abit KA7 has a bug that will cause the motherboard BIOS to be ruined upon installation of Windows 95. As far as I know, all other Athlon motherboards will be OK.

 

[Teatowel]

I have W95 running on a 16mhz 386..slow, but if all ya wanna do is type up the occasional letter on Word 6.0, as 8 year old cousin does, then why do you need anything else?

 

[Zach]

It takes IE 3.0 on Win95 about 15 seconds to load on a 386sx25 with a 120MB HD and 8MB of RAM. Slick.

 

[GD695372]

I'd just steer clear of ASUS Athlon boards for the time being. They seem to have quite a few problems. Otherwise I'd be using one by now. When is the bios gonna become fool-proof? Now there's a question. Something about dual or triple bioses comes to mind but I don't remember the board. If it's a bios problem and you really wanna take the careful path, find out what that board is. I can't believe i forgot what it was. I think Anandtech reviewed it.

gl

 

[mattyrug]

I have a KA7 w/win95 OSR-2, and all the latest drivers, and it runs a hell of a lot faster than 98 could've ever dreamed of, and a hell of a lot more stable. the only glitch was getting the right AGP Drivers, and settings to work. I Just don't use any Plug and Pray, I HATE it. Whenever possible, I always try to set all my devices manually in the BIOS.