Windows 95

[LazaruX]

Several people, including me have asked themself: "will Lazarus install on Windows 95?", "Will my application work on Windows 95?".

I will try to test this and try to answer that. If somebody has suggestions or has already done this, then post here.

There are different sub versions of Windows 95, here shortlyç

Windows 95
Windows 95 + Microsoft Plus
Windows 95 Service Pack 1
Windows 95 OEM Service Release 1  also called Win95a
Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2  also called Win95b
Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2.1
Windows 95 OEM Service Release 3  also called Win95c

I will try to "find" those versions and try to get Lazarus working on at least one of them (inside virtualbox).
PS Graphic drivers for Win95 in virtualbox can be found here:
http://www.bearwindows.boot-land.net/vbe9x.htm

[alter]

If you can't find all of those (there is no osr 3, just osr 2.5 btw) then you can try following thing. Since it's been said on this forum that IE might influence API fo Windows then install Win95 with IE 3 then upgrade to 5, check if Lazarus works, then upgrade IE to 5.5 and so on. You should have no problem with finding proper IE setups (I think)

[TurboRascal]

There are different sub versions of Windows 95, here shortlyç

Windows 95
Windows 95 + Microsoft Plus
Windows 95 Service Pack 1
Windows 95 OEM Service Release 1  also called Win95a
Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2  also called Win95b
Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2.1
Windows 95 OEM Service Release 3  also called Win95c

I had no idea there were so many of those. I knew only the original and OSR/2 being widely used. I'm not sure how W95 plus Plus (pun intended) differed from the original, since you could add (and I believe remove) Plus features to the original...

I will try to "find" those versions and try to get Lazarus working on at least one of them (inside virtualbox).
PS Graphic drivers for Win95 in virtualbox can be found here:
http://www.bearwindows.boot-land.net/vbe9x.htm

Thanks for the link, it will really help with 9x under virtualbox!

Btw.
There seems to be Win95SP1 for download on vetusware.com...

[guidoaerts]

I have a pc running win95, will try to install lazarus and report.  After the weekend.
Guido

[alter]

Installed Win95. Updated IE to 4.0 which solved problem with imagelist function (that problem applies also to Windows NT 4 and is described in proper thread). Then I've got issue with Unicode support. According to http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb762115(VS.85).aspx application should use unicows.dll in order to get access to certain unicode functions however Lazarus doesn't seem to use this dll. Tested with last snapshot

[clauslack]

@alter:
But works Windows 95 and Lazarus?

I have a missing export Shell32:SHBrowseForFolderW
Can be fixed it?

[guidoaerts]

Installed Lazarus on my PentiumS @133 Mhz, 64Mb RAM running WIN95 4.00.950B (which is win95b, I believe)
I also get the image list problem.  But I have no Ie4 or Ie5 around.  I will be looking for them in my old-cd's collection.
Guido

Installed Ie5.5, then got the Shell32:SHBrowseForFolderW error.
seems installing unicows.dll and conditional compilation for those api calls will be the only way to make this work.

FWIW : got Lazarus up and running on win98 se
(lazarus-0.9.26.2-fpc-2.2.2-win32.exe)

[alter]

Imagelist problem can be fixed by installing IE 4.0 (I've got installed the latest IE 4 with SP).

@alter:
But works Windows 95 and Lazarus?

I have a missing export Shell32:SHBrowseForFolderW
Can be fixed it?

That's what I am talking about. Originally this function is not available on Win 9x. At least not in shell dll as it is for example on Windows 2000. To use this function (and my guess is that also a few or several other functions) on Win 95 first it there must be unicows.dll library (can be still downloaded from Microsoft's website) and second application itself must know that those functions are in unicows.dll. Since the only way to tell application to look for function in dll is to modify application's code I didn't manage to run Lazarus. However it should be possible to run custom compiled Lazarus that is aware where to look for those missing functions.
In other words snapshot didn't work on Windows 95 even with IE 5.5 installed