AMD Duron / Athalon & win95

Hi Guys im looking for some guidance here,

My boss has decided that the 2 old machines in our office need replacing (About time too they are pentium 133mhz 32mb ram)
dont get me wrong here they are fine at what they do, which is a very small ammount of word processing and running Sage 7 on a daily basis, thats it no mail, web or anything else.

But they are getting on and can be a bit unstable at times, so he has asked me to get new machines,
which my local supplier had for £290 (Vat inc) they have AMD Duron 1100, 128mb ram, 40gb hdd, 8mb sma video, o/b sound and 100mbit nic & a 15in monitor. great deal I thought (and I go right past the shop on my way home)

Now I remembered that Win 95 had a problem with AMD K6 cpu's so does anyone know if it has any compatibility issues with the Duron / Athalon range? and if so can they be resolved?

And I know that you are saying dump Win95 & put 98 or 2k on it
But I forgot to mention that my boss is so tight his arse makes sqeaking noises on the way to the toilet cos he hates parting with anything!

He recons (And I agree,, to a point) that Win95 is fine for what it will be doing and there is no need to be purchasing any other OS

I tried to explain that I can get 2 legal copies of Win98 for £138 and that it would run great on the new systems, but after the paramedics revived him he told me that he wants to keep 95, miserable b'strd

I on the other hand dont want to waste my time installing 95 if its gonna be unstable or unsuitable.

I really would appreciate any advice / guidance here

Thanks in advance
TBP

 

Never mind

I was thing of wrong CPU.

OK. I am now back with the right CPU.

I have an AMD K6-2 500 and it ran 95 just fine.

BillyBob

 

Thanks for replying BillyBob,
its a little known problem between windows and AMD I had a Laptop with a K6-2 380 cpu which I downgraded to 95 immediately after purchase and it wouldnt boot and also my pc which was a K6-2 400 and also wouldnt boot so I had to take the plunge and reinstall the relatively new system at the time Win98!.

I tried to post the link to the page, but AMD wont accept direct linking and I cant post it as an attachment either, I having a great time here eh?
the best I can do for anyone who is interested is tell you to go to amd.com and search in the processor support section for "windows 95 compatibility issues "

I had a look whilst on the AMD site for any issues with the Duron / Athalon range, I couldnt find anything so it looks like I will have to wing it on the install.

Cheers
TBP

 

Right now I have an AMD Duron 1.2 on a MSI K7T Turbo2 and it has handled anything from DOS/Win3.1 on up to and including XP Pro. and no hassle with anything.

BillyBob

 

Magic, thats exactly what I wanted to hear

Thanks again BillyBob

He he, Windows 3.1 (My favourite system,, seriously) must have been impressive with that hardware

 

Because of AMD's old way of building chips, there were probs with 95. (or maybe it was because of MS's way of building 95, it had problems with AMD?).
No matter, the Duron's and Athlon's have no such issues.
I just finished a build for a client similar to yours.
Duron 1.3, 128 DDR, 20 gig, ECS (yuk!) board, with onboard sound, video (32 meg shared I think), and NIC.
Had to dig a bit to find 95 drivers for stuff (most of the 98 ones worked, except for the sound), but I found an ancient AC97 codec that works excellent. Then I found out he's got no speakers for it anyhow, so pooh.
It's a (sort of) triple boot system, DOS 6.22/WFW3.11 and Win95, using xosl for a boot manager (he's used to it).
It sure screams in WFW3.11 and is only slight slower loading Win95 ( "b" version, with updates for USB), but runs apps about the same speed.
Full install of MS Office, but only uses Word (don't ask why).
On the local LAN for simple filesharing only, no net.
I still think it's overkill, when a used PIII or even PII would have done the job (upgrading from a 386).

 

Thanks for replying reebot,

I agree totally with you about overkill, but the boss wanted a long warranty with them or I would have went looking for some late model P2 or early P3's.

The systems I am buying come with 40gb hdd's. (albeit on jetway or pc-chips boards, but you cant have everything)
It will have a minimum install of win 95, MS word 97, and client access to sage 7 on our server and thats it.

Im toying with the idea of swapping the 40gb drives for a pair of 3gb, seeing as they really dont need that ammount space, and it would be a waste of time and space partitioning them.
(Not to mention the fact that my own Linux work station & server could do with a pair of 40's)

Thanks for explaing the AMD / Win95 issue for me, I never really knew why it happened (and I didnt take the time to find out either,, lazy sod)