zombie84 said:
I bought the cheapest used computer I could find--a 2001-era Dell--just so I could run Windows 95 games without problems. It just seemed easier to me. It's a Dell computer from 2001, cost me $20. I know it sounds a bit extreme to buy a whole computer to run vintage games--although no one bats an eye at dropping $70 on an NES--but honestly for $20 it's worth the money, and I'm sure you could find one for free as long as you were willing to go pick it up, I was just lazy and actually found a $20 bill on the sidewalk that week so it seemed fair. It's hooked up to my modern LED monitor and the tower itself is pretty small so it doesn't actually intrude on space. It also runs DOS games without problems.
It's the perfect idea, all things considered, if you do have the space for another tower it's the best alternative to emulation. I think I have an old (working) tower from that same year, I just don't have the space to fit it in my room. And if I didn't have it I could still poke around schools and ask if they have old computers they'd like to get rid of. I remember when I was in middle school the computer lab was made of several old dos machines, with two additional W95's. They probably threw them all away, pity.
I do have an old HP Pavillion laptop, but of course it doesn't have soundblaster emulation, so no fun playing games on that.
And of course the floppy disc drive if you have pre-CD-ROM games like Police Quest.
But try and find floppy blanks......... which I did! I actually found a place that still sells floppy blanks! It's an electronics store near home, and it was surreal seeing those poor 1,44 mb bastards near all those dvd blanks and usb drives. The only consumers I can think of that still have a use for those are midi keyboard users. That's about it.
Is it possible to install a dual OS and actually run your modern computer in W95? I never tried that, but if you were really into vintage PC games but don't want to grab a second computer I would look into that.
I would not really recommend it, Windows 95 won't recognize modern hardware. Wiki says:
2GB is the maximum supported partition size on the 1st version of Windows 95 and OSR1.
and
The maximum amount of physical RAM in a PC that Windows 95 supports is approximately 480 MB