[BobMcBob]

Back in the day, when I was but a young teen, sad that I couldn't afford Win95 when it first came out (or run it THAT well on a 486DX2/66mhz & 4MB RAM).

Stuck with Win3.11 I looked for other things I could run, that didn't involve me nuking the PC and installing Slackware or otherwise distrupt the "Family PC's" main use; running Lotus 123 for my mother's home accounting business.

So what I found was something that could mimic a "modern" OS, but that still offered 100% of the compatibility, that even an accounting parent could stomach.

IBM Workplace Shell for Windows 3.1x:

https://winworldpc.com/product/ibm-workplace-shell/151

I found it on either the early web, or on a shareware BBS, but the purpose was the same; to convince someone to please, for the love of god, buy IBM OS/2 (not even OS/2 Warp!)

I sure as hell didn't care or want OS/2, but boy did it make my slowly falling behind Win3.11 PC look like the cool kids with their brand new spaceheater Pentiums.

I occasionally reflect back on that time and sorta miss those days, and that computer.. but then I remember it was a Packard Bell sunday flier special "package deal" purchased at Circuit City by a clueless parent in the early 90s, and I was lucky it lasted 4 years before the motherboard blew up and was sent to the recycler. Of course the 2 PSUs, and 3 HDDs dying in that time should have been a hint.

[jaclaz]

At the time we used Norton Desktop in the office:

http://toastytech.com/guis/ndw.html

But there was a leeser known shell that tried to mimic the Mac OS of the time (System 7/8), MCShell:

http://reboot.pro/index.php?showtopic=752

that was very good.

[santoshalper]

I think the 486/66 would probably have been ok for Windows 95, but the 4MB of ram would have been rough.

[watersb]

I ran Windows NT 4.0 on a DX2/66 -- with 32GB of RAM.

The RAM cost about $750 from a Silicon Valley importer. 1994. That was during a crisis in worldwide memory availability, caused at least in part by a fire that destroyed the only factory that made a chemical required by the semiconductor industry.

Our current supply chain crisis seems worse, but it isn't the first.

[Koshkin]

> 32GB of RAM

It’s funny how our fingers have lost the ability to type “MB of RAM.”

[watersb]

:-)

Megabytes. Yes. Oops.

I just bought some old Xeon CPUs on eBay that have 32 MB of cache. They cost rather less than $750.

[ecef9-8c0f-4374]

so we didn't learn anything. Sad to know.

[BobMcBob]

I can tell you from first hand experience it was. 4mb was the minimum requirements and I can tell you, that legally MS was correct in that statement. When I eventually did get a copy of Win95 plus Update (SP1 basicly), I ran it for exactly 1 week before I scraped together enough money to purchase another 8mb of RAM from Fry's. After that it was fine, at least until it blew itself up.

[int_19h]

For Win95, it was tolerable. Win98 with IE integration everywhere (remember "Active Desktop"?) was much more of a memory hog tho.

[hankman86]

I remember this one. Must have been IBMs last ditch attempt to make people move over to OS/2.