For the people who are into this sort of thing, did you have much experience with these old Windows versions back in the 90s when they were new, or is it about exploring old tech from before your time?
For me, I lived with 95 and 98 when they were new and looking back it was a nightmare. The ever present threat of crashes and losing work left a lasting negative impression on me, I have no nostalgic fondness for these systems. It was this pain that motivated me to install a copy of Red Hat Linux I found in the back of a book in the library and that's how I got "into computers", so I guess I own that much to Microsoft.
Delta City author here - thanks for undigging my old INF project :P
I am also of the times where 95/98 were "current", but we had nothing else - and for a long time. Computers were crazy expensive in Eastern Europe so were replaced rarely. That's why Windows 95 was commonplace even in 2004, especially in schools.
95 was much worse than anything later, but it brings fond memories of a first sent e-mail, first family computer etc. This is what DC was trying to revive.
I used both Win95 and Win98 and i don't remember crashes with the OS itself or most "software" to be much of a thing, even though i was already doing some programming (mainly Delphi) on it.
I do remember games causing tons of issues, hard locks and "endless" BSODs where trying to recover just had you enter another BSOD - so you had to restart the computer and sometimes the FAT would be corrupted (but it was always some game-related thing that got corrupted).
Windows 3.1 was way more unstable IME - that is an OS where i did lose work, but Win9x, at least when it came to applications, was much more stable and you could often recover.
Though i think system stability also heavily depended on your PC, there were a lot of shoddy components during the 90s that created weird compatibility issues which manifested as BSODs or other weirdness. Fortunately that stuff seemed to improve dramatically during the early 2000s.
I know ME got a bad rep, and I'm sure it crashed often for many, but for me it was by far the stablest 9x, and I really didn't have any issues with it. I really switched to 2000 (which was great) because I went with a dual CPU setup.
Once you ran memtest x86 to make sure you had decent mem sticks and got your driver combo right it was all very stable. But yeah, it took a lot of fiddling to get it that way.
Same. I have a fondness for NT4.0. Very solid and very fast. Felt like an OS which stayed out of your way and just ran apps. I also tried NT 3.51, but didn't clock many hours on that system, but it felt even more solid and very smooth. Not much software was compatible with it though, so there wasn't much point trying to use it as a daily driver past its prime. NT4 I used probably way too long, installed cygwin on it, sshd, coaxed it to play games with unofficial versions of DirectX and Voodoo 5 and forced it to run newer versions of Visual Studio which really expected Windows XP or something.
NT 4.0 was solid and felt fast! The UI was so snappy. You could just leave it running and never reboot -- it almost became a geek humble brag to do so. For those too young to remember, one of Windows 98's marketed features was the ability to use ACPI to turn off your computer without you having to press a physical power button! It was just expected the device would need to be turned off.
Windows 2000 was great too, which PC enthusiasts at the time realized was essentially "NT 5.0 but can play games because it has (official) DirectX". It's amazing how there's so little nostalgia for these two OSes. I watch some retro PC YouTubers and most haven't ever covered them. There's so much nostalgia for Windows XP. But among enthusiasts, the first impressions were that it ran slower than Windows 2000 and looked like a Fisher Price toy. I think a lot of PC enthusiasts hung onto these two OSes, as you point out, until they eventually relented and used Windows XP around the time of Service Pack 2's release.
I ran LiteStep (http://litestep.net) on NT 4.0 at one point in my teens, completely unaware that Apple would eventually make a NeXT-style operating system something I'd use as a daily driver.
NT 4.0 was not for the masses, it was costly (the OS license) and needed higher specs than the almost contemporary Windows 95 (which was largely sold with license included with the new PC).
As well, Windows 2000 was a "professional" OS.
Both were way ahead in stability when compared to the Win9x/Me counterparts, but in terms of number of users, they were a fraction of the 9x ones, so it is not surprising that you can find much more nostalgic people about the latter.
XP somehow "unified" the professional and home market, bringing the (unneeded) Fisher Price look that the professionals hated and the (unneeded) complexities of authorizations/NTFS that the home users were not prepared for.
I can testify for the stability of NT 4.0, I have run a machine for some 15 years, roughly from 2001 to 2016, running NT 4.00, on 24/7, and only reboots were once a year or so for cleaning or occasionally for replacing the (failed) PSU or hard disk (not as a server, as a desktop running a specific DOS based accounting software).
I remember initially I had a few BSOD's because for some reasons there was a counter of some kind in the mouse driver that caused them, but once that was fixed, if I recall correctly by a change in the Registry, it was really rock solid.
There's a roughly 5 year gap from ~1996-2002, tracking the rise of early GPUs and predating widespread Windows NT support and the release of DirectX 9, where it can be difficult to run old games.
Otherwise, Dosbox is great for really old games and you can directly run most games released in the last 20 years on modern hardware.
I am so incredibly glad that I have no use for this.
For the people who are into this sort of thing, did you have much experience with these old Windows versions back in the 90s when they were new, or is it about exploring old tech from before your time?
For me, I lived with 95 and 98 when they were new and looking back it was a nightmare. The ever present threat of crashes and losing work left a lasting negative impression on me, I have no nostalgic fondness for these systems. It was this pain that motivated me to install a copy of Red Hat Linux I found in the back of a book in the library and that's how I got "into computers", so I guess I own that much to Microsoft.
Delta City author here - thanks for undigging my old INF project :P I am also of the times where 95/98 were "current", but we had nothing else - and for a long time. Computers were crazy expensive in Eastern Europe so were replaced rarely. That's why Windows 95 was commonplace even in 2004, especially in schools. 95 was much worse than anything later, but it brings fond memories of a first sent e-mail, first family computer etc. This is what DC was trying to revive.
I used both Win95 and Win98 and i don't remember crashes with the OS itself or most "software" to be much of a thing, even though i was already doing some programming (mainly Delphi) on it.
I do remember games causing tons of issues, hard locks and "endless" BSODs where trying to recover just had you enter another BSOD - so you had to restart the computer and sometimes the FAT would be corrupted (but it was always some game-related thing that got corrupted).
Windows 3.1 was way more unstable IME - that is an OS where i did lose work, but Win9x, at least when it came to applications, was much more stable and you could often recover.
Though i think system stability also heavily depended on your PC, there were a lot of shoddy components during the 90s that created weird compatibility issues which manifested as BSODs or other weirdness. Fortunately that stuff seemed to improve dramatically during the early 2000s.
I know ME got a bad rep, and I'm sure it crashed often for many, but for me it was by far the stablest 9x, and I really didn't have any issues with it. I really switched to 2000 (which was great) because I went with a dual CPU setup.
Once you ran memtest x86 to make sure you had decent mem sticks and got your driver combo right it was all very stable. But yeah, it took a lot of fiddling to get it that way.
What I remember the most was endless BSODs when using Microsoft Office. No autosave (that I knew of anyway) made that hell.
Same. I have a fondness for NT4.0. Very solid and very fast. Felt like an OS which stayed out of your way and just ran apps. I also tried NT 3.51, but didn't clock many hours on that system, but it felt even more solid and very smooth. Not much software was compatible with it though, so there wasn't much point trying to use it as a daily driver past its prime. NT4 I used probably way too long, installed cygwin on it, sshd, coaxed it to play games with unofficial versions of DirectX and Voodoo 5 and forced it to run newer versions of Visual Studio which really expected Windows XP or something.
NT 4.0 was solid and felt fast! The UI was so snappy. You could just leave it running and never reboot -- it almost became a geek humble brag to do so. For those too young to remember, one of Windows 98's marketed features was the ability to use ACPI to turn off your computer without you having to press a physical power button! It was just expected the device would need to be turned off.
Windows 2000 was great too, which PC enthusiasts at the time realized was essentially "NT 5.0 but can play games because it has (official) DirectX". It's amazing how there's so little nostalgia for these two OSes. I watch some retro PC YouTubers and most haven't ever covered them. There's so much nostalgia for Windows XP. But among enthusiasts, the first impressions were that it ran slower than Windows 2000 and looked like a Fisher Price toy. I think a lot of PC enthusiasts hung onto these two OSes, as you point out, until they eventually relented and used Windows XP around the time of Service Pack 2's release.
I ran LiteStep (http://litestep.net) on NT 4.0 at one point in my teens, completely unaware that Apple would eventually make a NeXT-style operating system something I'd use as a daily driver.
NT 4.0 was not for the masses, it was costly (the OS license) and needed higher specs than the almost contemporary Windows 95 (which was largely sold with license included with the new PC). As well, Windows 2000 was a "professional" OS. Both were way ahead in stability when compared to the Win9x/Me counterparts, but in terms of number of users, they were a fraction of the 9x ones, so it is not surprising that you can find much more nostalgic people about the latter.
XP somehow "unified" the professional and home market, bringing the (unneeded) Fisher Price look that the professionals hated and the (unneeded) complexities of authorizations/NTFS that the home users were not prepared for.
I can testify for the stability of NT 4.0, I have run a machine for some 15 years, roughly from 2001 to 2016, running NT 4.00, on 24/7, and only reboots were once a year or so for cleaning or occasionally for replacing the (failed) PSU or hard disk (not as a server, as a desktop running a specific DOS based accounting software). I remember initially I had a few BSOD's because for some reasons there was a counter of some kind in the mouse driver that caused them, but once that was fixed, if I recall correctly by a change in the Registry, it was really rock solid.
Windows 2000 is my favorite OS of all time. It was fast, stable, snappy and the UI was remarkable with so much thought put in everything.
.net was also ported to windows 95 recently... https://github.com/itsmattkc/dotnet9x
I love dinosaur cursor!
I miss old crazy-odd-web like that :-)
Maybe this is a good place to ask: what's the best way to run a Windows retro machine for games these days? Virtualbox, Dosbox-x?
There's a roughly 5 year gap from ~1996-2002, tracking the rise of early GPUs and predating widespread Windows NT support and the release of DirectX 9, where it can be difficult to run old games.
Otherwise, Dosbox is great for really old games and you can directly run most games released in the last 20 years on modern hardware.
dosbox-x, unless you want to run direct3d games.
There is PCem for that, but I had mixed results in terms of stability and speed.
Apparently x86 is hard to emulate in a performant way.
I see some recommend it as as the top option; it isn't at all?
See also Python for Windows 95:
https://retrosystemsrevival.blogspot.com/2020/12/python-27-w...
With KernelEx you can run VLC:
https://wiki.videolan.org/Documentation:Installing_VLC/
General list of software which works on Windows 95:
https://msfn.org/board/topic/176623-last-versions-of-softwar...
Very cool. I'm going to try installing in DosBox now. What about Windows 3.11, 98 and NT4?
For Windows 98 Second Edition there is the unofficial Service Pack 3, https://www.htasoft.com/u98sesp/
There is also https://windowsupdaterestored.com/ but it needs some tweaking to get it to run mostly because of the url change and ssl certificates...
All on Winworld, https://winworldpc.com/library/operating-systems
Awesome. Thank you. Looking for Visual Studio 6 now. Only found Spanish and Japanese versions so far.
Here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36478456
Thank you for trying to help but Tenox appears dead - it now leads to a page advertising some kind of IoT-related services.
No worries!
No it is not dead, working perfectly here.
There's also: https://mirrors.pdp-11.ru/
https://mirrors.pdp-11.ru/search.php?text=visual+studio+6&pa...
Thank you so much. Such a great place. I was sad to see it dead immediately as I read it existed. What a relief.
Any torrent mirrors of the ISOs? the site looks hugged. Nothing in archive.org search.
Boom, mirrored: https://archive.org/details/deltacity95-v0.75
I even included my archive of the linked page itself.