If you have a soft spot in your heart for Windows 95 and own an Android smartphone, today is your lucky day. Two emulators have been released that will allow you to port the 15-year-old operating system to your phone.
One of the projects was developed on a BOSCH emulator and is said to be “very stable”, but runs too slowly to be of use. The other, developed with a QEMU emulator, is fast but has a lot of bugs. “SB16 emulation is working, but no MIDI music. FPU emulation is incorrect/incomplete, so it may cause some programs not to run or behave strangely. Network is not working. Keyboard/mouse emulation is far from perfect,” the developer of the project wrote in a post over at XDA Developers.
If you’re compelled to try it yourself, step-by-step instructions are also posted to the forum thread. Unfortunately, the developer, who goes by the name “mamaich”, has announced that he’ll no longer be developing the projects. He does state, however, that he’s willing to provide sources and information to anyone who is interested in continuing the work.
Running classic operating systems on modern mobile phones seems to be becoming a bit of a trend lately. Back in May, another Android user ran Windows 3.1 on his phone using the DOSBox emulator. Phandroid called that project, “completely useless, but really damn cool.”
While this might not be the most useful or productive endeavor in the world, it could definitely be fun for those of us who enjoy hacking and modding our phones.
