On August 24, 1995, Microsoft released Windows 95 to the World. August 24, 2020 marks the
25th anniversary of its release.
The last time I took a retrospective look at an operating system, I built an entire
computer to make the most of everything it could do. But I have something different in
mind this time. A viewer in Ohio made a very generous offer to send me this complete original
Gateway 2000 G6-333, a factory Windows 95 system. So today we’re going to take a look
at getting it up and running and what made Windows 95 one of the most revolutionary operating
systems of all time.
This computer was mailed to me in a very, large shipment that included the system itself
and peripherals like the keyboard, mouse, and monitor. And careful packing was done
to make sure everything arrived as safely as possible. Initially I thought the Desktop
had been through some rough hits, but it ended up being fine. It along with all the other
parts, thankfully, had no damage. The original CRT monitor, inarguably the most fragile with
a glass tube, was shipped extremely securely in a sturdy shipping crate. The keyboard and
mouse were mixed in with some of the documentation and software. And there was a lot of software
included here, but we’ll need to get this computer up and running before we can make
use of that.
The first step is getting the desktop back in shape. I took it outside and did an initial
cleaning on it with an air compressor. After that, I brought it in so we could get a better
look at the insides. Large capacitors in systems like this have become infamous for failing,
but thankfully these had no signs of issues and ended up working just fine.
Next I turned my focus to the cards. This system still had all the original parts it
came with, with the exception of the memory and hard drive. The graphics card included
with it is an AGP interface STB Velocity 128, an early fully integrated 3D and 2D card with
a healthy 4MB of VRAM. The chip at the heart of it was a Riva 128 from an up and coming
graphics company, called nVidia. The sound card is an Ensoniq AudioPCI, a last attempt
by Ensoniq who was struggling at the time and it’s aimed at being a more affordable
card. Then we have the Telepath modem, something I can’t really make any use of now since
I lack any kind of phone line. And the last card that you may have missed earlier, is
actually the CPU. A Pentium II clocked at 333MHz in the slot 1 form factor. At this
point I’ll also replace the missing RAM, I had a 128MB stick of the SD RAM this system
takes handy. It’s,uh, double what this would have shipped with, but hey, why not.
Next on to the drives. The system came with a 32x speed CD-ROM drive fit into the case
and a 1.44MB 3.5” floppy drive molded, frankly, a little too deep in the plastic. And what
is the only modification of this system as far as I can see, a HP CD writer was installed.
The space it had to be put in was originally covered by a removable panel that has long
since been separated [from] the system. Lastly I need to replace the hard drive and I’m
going to be significantly overshooting the original 8GB drive with a 100GB model.
With the memory and storage now sorted out, the computer itself is now ready to go and
we can turn our attention to the peripherals. First let’s take a look at the mouse, right
away we can see it’s actually a rebranded Microsoft intellimouse. I was advised that
the mouse had a sticking scroll wheel and it was indeed fully seized. I disassembled,
cleaned, and modified it to try and fix this but I think the rubber has expanded over time
and is stuck against the bottom of the wheel track. I found another sporadic problem with
the sensor for the vertical axis that prevents the cursor from being able to move down sometimes.
I’m not sure where the problem is on this but I think a better option at this point
will be to transplant a working Microsoft intellimouse mouse into this shell. The keyboard
had one slight problem, the gateway logo had some corrosion on it. But a little CLR and
scrubbing got it looking very shiny again. Aside from that, it’s an average rubber
dome keyboard and doesn’t have exciting features like it’s Anykey predecessor. And
lastly we have the EV900 monitor, a 19” point 26 dot pitch CRT with digital controls.
It’s able to be cranked all the way up to 1600x1200 and at lower resolutions up to 160Hz!
There should be a Boston Acoustics speaker set with this system for it to be complete
as shipped, but the original owner actually mentioned that it had failed and was thrown
out some time ago.
But that’s it! We’re ready to get this back up and running with Windows 95 now! Before
we start the install process, one more thing about this system, how much do you think it
cost? For an above average Gateway 2000 multimedia system with a complete peripheral setup, you
could expect to pay…$3000 or 4800 in 2020 dollars! This was a significant computer to
get into for sure. And now to continue on we’re going to turn to the software pack
that came with. This contained extra software, some Games, a Gateway System disc, as well
as the original installation media. And there is something interesting to note about this.
Windows 95 was an interesting case for version releases, because as far as consumers were
concerned, there was one version of Windows 95. What you got in the box when you bought
it was always the same until it was replaced by 98. However, the version that was shipped
to system manufacturers did get updated and this computer came with a version known as
OSR2 that included initial support for USB.
Alright now let’s pop in the Windows 95 disc and begin the re-install. The install
process isn’t too special if you’ve ever installed Windows before, it pretty much comes
down to choosing where to put it, what features you want, and waiting for the transfer. And
while I was watching the install though I noticed all these banner images on the side
and quite liked them. So I pulled them all out of my captured footage and put together
a phone background set out of them. It’s linked below if you want some mid 90’s computer
goodness on your phone. Once the install process has finished though we are greeted with the
familiar pale green background and the helpful startup tips. At this point though our job
isn’t done yet, we still need to install drivers for everything. Since this system
is basically stock though, we can pop in the Gateway system disc and get everything we
need from there.
Ah, welcome to 16 color graphics. It shouldn’t look like this, without video drivers this
is the best that Windows 95 can guarantee your computer can do. But this handy program
from gateway can help us set up our graphics card set back up. And wow, once it’s installed,
that’s some heavy customization to the system UI. Here we can also poke around the settings
and crank the monitor up to 120Hz, there’s not much reason to do that for Windows itself
though, there aren’t really animations to take advantage of it. But games could, though
it will take something easy to run and highly configurable to do it. But we now have much
improved color support and can go back and get the sound drivers off the disc, and the
system disc is looking much better now as we begin that process. With that driver installed,
let’s go ahead and do our first full reboot.
The startup sound goes along with something that stood out to me as I’ve been using
this system, it’s really excited to make noises all the time. There are a few annoying
quirks though right after the install. Explorer defaults to opening folders in new Windows,
so you’ll likely want to change it to use just one. Then you’ll notice you don’t
have any navigation controls, and you’ll have to enable them to see the path and move
around. And then you may find you don’t have a My Documents folder, you were still
expected to handle file management yourself on your bare hard drive. These are all little
things though that can be chalked up to just how radically different the Windows 95 UI
was. And this is easily the most important aspect of it. So many things we take for granted
as standard were all new in this release of Windows. There is now a system tray for accessing
background applications and receiving notifications. Next to that, the task bar area that displays
running programs and allows easily switching between them. And finally, the start button.
A menu accessible with a single click, or press of the new Windows key, that gives you
access to all of your programs, the settings for managing the system, and a list of recent
files for you to continue working with. The start menu was a significant innovation and
prominently displayed on the back of the box.
Another significant feature available in Windows 95 was Internet Explorer. TheThe inclusion
of internet explorer in Windows 95 removed just one more barrier for people to begin
using the web. And it worked, IE was the most popular browser by far for many years after
that. It’s availability undoubtedly helped promote the growth of the internet. Though
it’s inclusion with the operating system has become contentious at times for the clear
advantage it gave it over its competitors’ products. And IE has rarely been a force for
good by creating their own features that web pages could use effectively preventing other
browsers from displaying them at all. This coupled with other abrasive tactics left many
disgruntled with it and as it is finally being put out to pasture this year, there aren’t
many tears being shed.
The last significant feature I want to touch on has had a very different reception despite
also being a Microsoft exclusive feature. Windows 95 introduced DirectX to people for
the first time. Early 3D rendering was done on cards dedicated to the task, like the Voodoo
2 I put in my Tiny Pentium system. In addition to the hardware itself, these companies would
need to create a software interface with their cards for developers to write programs with.
This means that if the program you wanted to run, which included games, wasn’t designed
for the 3D card you had, you couldn’t run it. And supporting multiple cards, meant including,
developing, and testing the software on all of them. This is where DirectX stepped in.
It was a unifying layer of software between programs and hardware that let programmers
only have to write code once to support all the cards of the time. Hardware manufacturers
could then write their software as a driver that DirectX could translate the program’s
graphics needs to match.
Which brings me back to one more thing that was sent along with the computer. All of the
games in their boxes that the original owner had purchased to play on this computer. I’m
going to pick out a few of these games as well as some others I have to give you a feeling
for what gaming was like on Windows 95.
Windows 95 definitely had it’s time to shine and can be thanked for introducing so many
new features that I still couldn’t fit them all in this video on it. And there are still
some underlying traces of it in Windows 10 today that you can see when you run an older
program on it. I’m glad to have had the opportunity to bring this system back to life
and preserve it as an example of how this OS was used. I hope you enjoyed this in depth
look at Windows 95. And if you wanna see more stuff like this, you should subscribe. And
if you want to support the channel, I am on Patreon. But for now, that’s it, and I’ll
see you next time.