Finally got the video together! Windows 95 is running on the Osborne 486, although getting everything installed has taken a little more fiddling than I originally expected. Between the Creative CD-200, the floppy drives and a few other surprises, the old machine certainly hasn’t made things boring.

The Creative CD-ROM works most of the time, but it’s rather selective about the discs I feed it. My Taiyo Yuden CD-Rs simply won’t read, while these old TDK Gold 80-minute discs, manufactured by CMC Magnetics, seem to work more often than not. Some burned discs even cause the computer to lock up. That’s just how this particular drive behaves with the media I’ve tried, rather than proof that one manufacturer makes better discs than another.

Unfortunately, I’ve got about fifty Taiyo Yudens and four… make that three TDK Gold discs left. Naturally, the ones I have the fewest of are the ones the Osborne actually likes!

I’ve also moved the floppy drive higher in the case because the cable wouldn’t reach properly. One curious discovery was that the floppy connector needed to be oriented the opposite way from what its physical notches seemed to suggest. I also swapped the Sound Blaster Pro 2 for a Sound Blaster 16 Value, because having stereo sound in a 486 seems like a much better idea than putting up with mono.

With those bits sorted out, DOS was installed and Windows 95 setup could finally get underway. All that’s left is to see whether this thing will actually finish installing without discovering another problem.

Windows 95 comes to life

And here we are with Windows 95 alive on the Osborne! The Creative CD-200 is reading discs, the hard drive is making plenty of noise and the machine is chugging away at a pace that would probably seem ridiculous to anyone using a modern computer. It’s quite wonderful, really.

The first boot takes an absolute age. Between the memory test, setup screens and Windows deciding to finish configuring itself, there’s plenty of time to contemplate whether I should have installed quite so much software. It’s already used approximately 170 MB of the roughly 300 MB hard drive, although I did install all the screensavers. Priorities!

I’ve also discovered what appears to be a boot-sector virus on something in the system, so that’s another problem to investigate. I’m not particularly enthusiastic about having it spread to every floppy disk I insert. The network card has been giving me trouble too, and I’ve got a separate cleanup project underway for the virus.

Eventually the familiar teal Windows 95 desktop appears. Even better, the sound works! I get to listen to some MIDI and try an audio CD, which also reminds me of the Creative CD-200’s rather interesting activity lights. The indicator behaves differently for audio playback and data access, something that had been puzzling me since I started putting the Osborne back together.

The old machine may not be particularly quick, and I’ve still got a few things to fix, but Windows 95 is installed, the CD drive works and we’re making progress. Slow progress, admittedly. Very slow progress!