Upgrade path

Bennmann

I can't tell if this goes into H/A or here. If one hypothetically had laying around their basement the floppies and external drive to install windows 3.1 and the disks to upgrade that to 95, and then to 98 and then to XP, could one conceivably (with the obvious keys required) upgrade all the way from Windows 3.1 to Vista (on a modern machine)?

Azio

No. Don't be silly.

HadjiQuest

On a modern machine it's pretty unlikely that you'd be able to get 3.1-98 to work.

bobmyknob

You don't have to actually load the OSes onto the computer to upgrade from them. You just need to have their keys, so say you insert the XP upgrade disc, it just ask for a 98/2000 key and will do a full install.

zanetheinsane

Pretty pointless considering the end result will be indistinguishable from a clean install of Vista, but I'm pretty sure it would work.

We've all done pointless things. I put Windows 2000 on a 100 MHz 486DX2 with 96Mb of RAM. It took 5 minutes to boot but it worked. (The minimum listed specs for Windows 2000 were 133MHz and 64Mb of RAM)

Ego

I ran 95/98 for a long time on a 40mhz 386 (AMD's first really excellent enthusiast CPU, for anyone who actually remembers.) It actually wasn't too bad, with 40mb of RAM .

Why wouldn't 3.1/95/98 run on modern hardware, out of curiosity? I certainly haven't tried it but now I'm tempted to just to find out.

lilB

Ego wrote: »

I ran 95/98 for a long time on a 40mhz 386 (AMD's first really excellent enthusiast CPU, for anyone who actually remembers.) It actually wasn't too bad, with 40mb of RAM .

Why wouldn't 3.1/95/98 run on modern hardware, out of curiosity? I certainly haven't tried it but now I'm tempted to just to find out.

XP doesn't even work on some of newer machines because it can't run the drivers for some of the newer AHCI disk controllers.

Ego

Ah but that's only in the case of SATA drives, isn't it? Most mobos still come with one IDE connector, so you wouldn't really have trouble with using an IDE drive assuming you formatted / partitioned your drive appropriately, would you?

zanetheinsane

lilB wrote: »

Ego wrote: »

I ran 95/98 for a long time on a 40mhz 386 (AMD's first really excellent enthusiast CPU, for anyone who actually remembers.) It actually wasn't too bad, with 40mb of RAM .

Why wouldn't 3.1/95/98 run on modern hardware, out of curiosity? I certainly haven't tried it but now I'm tempted to just to find out.

XP doesn't even work on some of newer machines because it can't run the drivers for some of the newer AHCI disk controllers.

But it will run on your PSP! (kidding! I know it's not really XP) However, Windows 3.1 is the real deal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY4I_cZIf60

lilB

Ego wrote: »

Ah but that's only in the case of SATA drives, isn't it? Most mobos still come with one IDE connector, so you wouldn't really have trouble with using an IDE drive assuming you formatted / partitioned your drive appropriately, would you?

Yeah that's what I figured but it won't work with sata optical drives either unless you disable AHCI.

PeregrineFalcon

Since this is clearly a "Because I Can" exercise, I won't be impressed unless you tempt fate and install the consumer OS that everyone loves to hate, Windows ME.