Category Archives: Windows 95

Windows 9x Video Minidriver Source Code

As promised, here is the source code for the Windows 9x VirtualBox display minidriver. For discussion of the source code, see the included readdev.txt file. The code was developed on a Windows 10 host system. For extra credit, I attempted … Continue reading

Posted in Development, Source code, VirtualBox, Watcom, Windows 95 | 18 Comments

Windows 9x Video Minidriver HD+

The OS/2 Museum has made available the first version of a display driver disk for Windows 9x running on VirtualBox. The driver uses a linear framebuffer and supports 8/16/24/32bpp modes with resolutions up to 1920×1200 pixels (see more below). The … Continue reading

Posted in Development, VirtualBox, Watcom, Windows 95 | 61 Comments

Ladders and Dragons

While looking at the Windows 95 disk subsystem, something seemed oddly familiar. The nagging feeling was confirmed by the Windows 95 DDK documentation (a file called BLOCK.DOC). The new Windows 95 layered block device driver model called “Dragon” wasn’t all … Continue reading

Posted in OS/2, PC history, SCSI, Windows 95 | Leave a comment

Book Review: Unauthorized Windows 95

A Few Decades Late Book Reviews Unauthorized Windows 95 Developer’s Resource Kit, by Andrew Schulman IDG Books, November 1994; 593 pages, ISBN 1-56884-305-4; $39.99 A testimony to the incredible level of hype surrounding Microsoft’s “Chicago”, Unauthorized Windows 95 was published nearly a year before … Continue reading

Posted in Books, DOS Extenders, Windows 95 | 16 Comments

Installing Windows 95 on SCSI in a VM

For the adventurous, it is possible to install Windows 95 in a VM configured with SCSI storage (hard disk, CD-ROM) attached to an emulated BusLogic HBA. This works in VirtualBox, but there’s a catch—the emulated PCI BusLogic HBA must have … Continue reading

Posted in BusLogic, SCSI, VirtualBox, Windows 95 | 7 Comments

The IHC Damage

Trying to sort through a heap of floppy images recently, I found many of them to contain a suspicious ‘IHC’ signature in their boot sector in the location where an OEM identifier (such as ‘IBM  3.3’ or ‘MSDOS5.0’ would normally … Continue reading

Posted in DOS, Windows, Windows 95 | 5 Comments