What was your first OS?

RoozerXC said:

At least I have a spare PC with that socket 939 motherboard, as i was able to dig out an old compaq presario case to fit it with. I'll mess with it later

Another thing you could try is using the Inexperience Patcher and X-Setup Pro to configure Windows XP to fake being Windows 98SE. (You'll also need a copy of Windows 98SE to grab the pre-WinME/Win2K versions of the desktop icons from.)

I did that with a Wyse Cx0 thin client (after upgrading the storage) since it doesn't have video or audio drivers for 9x and what I produced is convincing enough that I relax into it just as much as my HP t5530 running actual 98SE... except that it's a more robust OS.

I like to call these "rose-coloured glasses builds" because they get rid of problems that I took for granted back in the day but have now grown used to not having to deal with, which would otherwise make it difficult to recapture the experience I had as a kid. For example, as someone who daily-drives Linux, I've grown very used to tab completion and command history, but DOSKEY is a conventional memory glutton, so I use the open-source'd release of 4DOS as the shell for my MS-DOS 6.22 setup because it gives me those things while its facility for loading so much high actually making it easier to free up enough conventional memory for picky games.

The compatibility isn't 100% perfect (eg. you need a patched version of the Magic the Gathering CD-ROM game to get it working on NT-lineage Windows), but, aside from being too slow to run VDMSound to get Soundblaster emulation, it's actually better than my t5530, which does approximate a GeForce 4, but has no SoundBlaster emulation either (like a "legacy-free" Windows 98 PC) and has some kind of bug in its audio drivers that causes it to blue-screen and then continue without audio if I try to run Timon and Pumbaa's Jungle Games on it, but no other game I've tried.

Another example of "rose-colored glasses builds" would be that I didn't have a LAN until the tail end of my Windows 98SE days and, even then, I never had working network browsing until after I ditched Windows XP on my main PC for Linux and Samba, but it's just so much more convenient... and more fun, to actually have useful things show up in Network Neighborhood thanks to a Samba install with loosened minimum protocol and auth settings. (I'm looking forward to when I have a moment to fix my Windows for Workgroups 3.11 install so I can finally use the Windows 3.1x-era networking UI for the first time outside of that day my father brought me to his cubicle after hours.)

debodun said:

3.1 - I'm old!

I remember a professor having us try a 3.1 virtual machine in school. I thought that it was horrid. Really it wasn't a true OS. Just a program management system with some built in programs.