
I installed Windows 95 on my Apple Watch - coloneltcb
https://medium.com/tendigi-insights/i-installed-windows-95-on-my-apple-watch-589fda5e36d
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xirdstl
Impressive! I remember upgrading to Windows 95 back in the day so I could play
Diablo. My PC struggled at the time. It's amazing the kind of portable
computing power we have now.

Also it's fortunate that he didn't install ME, which might have destroyed the
universe.

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kingnight
Next up, BeOS, please!

I think it's the plain blue background of Window 95 that made me jump to that
idea. Windows95 base look holds up really nicely vs versions that came between
95-10.

~~~
digi_owl
Windows 98 holds up better in modern terms, and there you had things like USB
support build right in.

~~~
mhd
Was 98 the first one with gradients in the window bar?

I remember being quite disappointed when the toolbar buttons went all flat, as
I felt that was offering a consistent UI (button -> 3D look) on the altar of
design. But I think that came with one of the Office versions first. (QA was
horrible back then, if you had a Windows applications, you had to cross-check
it with every ofice/OS permutation, as both wreaked havoc on your UI dlls).

~~~
laumars
95 didn't support title bar gradients natively, but it was trivially easily to
add support for it into your application manually. If I recall correctly, it
was only one win32 API.

I used to love hacking about with the Win32 Apis in the old days. I wrote all
sorts of neat tricks like turning the start button into a paddle for a weird
desktop-based game of Breakout.

~~~
userbinator
_turning the start button into a paddle for a weird desktop-based game of
Breakout._

I've done a bit of fun "repurposing" of the Win32 controls too, and that is
something I'd definitely love to see --- probably along with quite a few
others on HN.

~~~
coderdude
It exists in a hundred different uploads on Planet Source Code's VB6 section.
Go nuts.

[https://www.planet-source-
code.com/vb/default.asp?lngWId=1](https://www.planet-source-
code.com/vb/default.asp?lngWId=1)

I was an obsessive VB6er.

~~~
laumars
Oh wow. That's a blast from the past. I don't think I've been on that site
since the 90s.

I still have an unclaimed prize ticket for winning best submission one month.

It's a pity the owner never gave the UI more love as that site had the member
base long before StackExchange et al but it just failed to compete. Even now,
it still looks like a 90s site and that's not even the same design it had in
the 90s.

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frik
You ported Bochs to Apple Watch (complete x86 computer emulator, not a just a
virtual machine) and run Win95 (because it consumes little resources and
already took hours too boot). You could also run Rhapsody/NeXTSTEP (the
precursor of Mac OS X/iOS/WatchOS) or even a stripped down WinXP on Apple
Watch which has 512MB RAM
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Watch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Watch)
). Anyway great job, and I am waiting for someone to run Rhapsody (or early
Mac OS X version using PearPC) on Apple Watch, that would be so meta ;)

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bananaoomarang
Impressive you can run an x86 emulator on there at all, even more so it holds
out for the hour+ long boot time and actually runs it without crashing.

As an aside from this: what would actually be neat is having DOSBox on there,
or some old console emulators + a layer for translating the sensors/inputs to
controller buttons.

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_ph_
Cool hack! And the comparison of the watch specs with a pc of that time shows,
how far computer hardware has developed in those years. Without the emulation
overhead, it would be completely feasible to run Windows 95 on a todays watch.
This of course raises the questions, could you install a linux natively
compiled for the watch on it an run it at a reasonable speed? Might be
actually usable.

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pstoll
Beautiful madness.

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userbinator
I'm surprised Win95 could handle the (very) odd resolution, even smaller than
desktops would have at the time, or is it standard VGA downscaled?

~~~
sdk77
I had the same question, looked up the resolution, it's 312x390, about half
VGA. Guess that's why it looked pretty sharp still.

By the way "Optional: hot glue a motor to the watch’s crown to keep it from
falling asleep." \- that made my day!

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mhartl
This story is a good hacker litmus test. If you can appreciate why installing
Windows 95 on an Apple Watch is awesome, you're probably a hacker; if not,
definitely not.

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mappy
Very cool. Looks really slow, though.

~~~
shortsightedsid
That's because Win95 is running on top of Bochs. Bochs simulates every x86
instruction in software. Getting Bochs to run on Apple Watch is itself
impressive!

~~~
JoshTriplett
It's unfortunate that qemu probably can't run on iOS due to its JIT code
generation. qemu (without KVM acceleration) doesn't run nearly as fast as
native, but it runs orders of magnitude faster than Bochs.

~~~
05
It's possible to statically JIT the hotspots, then statically link that code
into the app. You'd probably have to rewrite lots of qemu code though..

~~~
JoshTriplett
That would also make that build of qemu app-specific, and for that matter not
distributable if it included code derived from Windows.

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fsiefken
Great totally unpractical exercise. What about taking one step back and taking
two steps forward in the practical range, using dosbox to get win3.11 to run
with bluetooth keyboard and mouse. It will get you faster bootup for sure, and
perhaps with win32s some win9x programs will run. Or better yet, get a
bluetooth supported minimal linux with ssh server and mobile gui running...
something like Tizen... o wait

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SmellyGeekBoy
I was intrigued by the 386 comparison in the opening paragraph so I decided to
double check on Wikipedia - turns out that it was indeed possible (and
officially supported) to run Windows 95 on a 386! Can't imagine it was a fun
experience, though.

~~~
fsiefken
Given enough memory it should be pretty usable I think (> 16 MB). Though I
prefered to stick with Win3.11 on my 386 4 MB toshiba greyscale laptop(which
ran pretty damn fast)...

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chris_wot
Hmmm... I wonder if you could install ReactOS on that watch?

~~~
colejohnson66
Because he used Bochs, any x86 operating system will run. All you would need
to do is bundle a ReactOS image instead of a Win 95 one. However, if it took
an hour to boot Win 95, imagine how long it would take to boot a modern OS!

~~~
frik
ReactOS is pretty tiny, and consumes just little more memory than Win95. It's
one of the less bloated NT series OS, only comparable with NT 3.x series in
the memory foot print.

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jimothyhalpert7
Ah, still remember the school nights spent on getting Win95 to run on my Nokia
5800. After finally getting it to run, I, of course, realized that it had no
practical value to me. Luckily, my friend was a HOMM2 fan, so that DOSBOX
install found it's use. I only wish we payed more attention to French class...

------
jug
I was a bit surprised over the slow speed given the reasonable specs of the
Apple Watch. Then I realized it was running on top a software emulator, and
the disappointment turned into amazement.

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capote
Aww, it's such a tiny Windows 95 :3

Almost makes me forget the pain and misery of Windows 95.

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hola_hola
Incredibly awesome!!! I hope one can also install windows apps. That would
also be cool.

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alistproducer2
I wanted to say I accidentally flagged this. I have a small phone and fat
fingers. Sorry.

~~~
greenyoda
If you accidentally flag an article, you can click the "unflag" link to
reverse the action.

~~~
alistproducer2
Thanks. I didn't see that. Unflagged.

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J_Darnley
Huh? I doubt it has an x86 CPU in there not to mention floppy disk or CDROM
drives to read from the media.

> iOS port of the Bochs x86 emulator

Oh. Boo.

~~~
dang
We've asked you before to stop posting snarky dismissals of other people's
work to HN. Such comments go against both the guidelines and spirit of this
site. You clearly have a lot of knowledge to share, which is great, but we
need you to actually share it—by teaching the reader something new—and to
eliminate the bits that just put others down.

~~~
teddyh
I have no idea what J_Darnley has written previously, but in this case you are
being unfair. J_Darnley’s “snarky dismissal” may in this case be terse, but it
is entirely deserved here – they didn’t “install Windows 95”, they ran it in
an _emulator_. A standard, commonly used, x86 processor and PC platform
emulator. The title is misleading.

From the article, it seems that to even get the emulator running on the Apple
Watch was a serious problem, and I can see that. And if the article title
would have reflected this, like “ _I got a PC emulator running on my Apple
Watch and ran Windows 95 in it_ ”, then I would have had no problem with it.
As it is, it’s misleading clickbait.

~~~
shimon
How else could he have gotten Windows 95 running on an Apple Watch? Recompile
Windows? Swap out a processor?

The fact remains that this article describes something novel and technically
difficult. If you have a better suggestion of how a Real Hacker would run
Windows 95 on a watch, please tell us about it. That would be interesting.

~~~
teddyh
It is the very fact that it is, at first glance, impossible which makes the
headline interesting. The fact that it _is_ impossible (and the article
describes something similar but different) does _not_ excuse the headline from
the charge of inaccuracy and clickbait.

The article _does_ describe something novel, interesting and difficult. But
not what was promised by the headline.

~~~
chris_wot
I'm sorry, but that's ridiculous. He installed Windows 95 on the x86 emulator
Bochs on a wristwatch running iOS!

What is _not_ amazing about that? So what if it's emulated? It definitely
installed and ran - on his _wrist_!!!

I'm not normally impressed, but this is amazing!

