Hi.
I just got an 80GB IDE HDD from my friend and wanted to test Chicago's on my PC.
Specs:
AMD Athlon 64 x2 3000+ 2.00 GHz
2.00 GB RAM
NVidia 9400GT 512Mb
500GB SATA2 HDD, 80GB IDE HDD

Is there a RAM limit? I have 2 pieces 1 GB each so that i can remove one and limit the RAM to 768 MB min. by putting an onboard GPU.

That system is obviously too modern to be able to run Chicago. Why not just try a VM?

Don't say you want to run it on a real machine.

with 64MB of RAM Chicago it runs well in a VM.

9x has trouble with 512mb of ram, so I'd hazard a guess that anything below 512mb should work fine. No idea if it'll boot though. If you end up trying, let us know if it was able to run at all!

You can propably run FreeDOS and Win 3.1 on it.
Chicago shows wrong and negative disk size.
For trying older NT builds you could use the VBEMP or UniATA drivers.

Doesn't Windows 95 RTM have a 256 MB limit anyway (due to himem.sys limits)? If so, Chicago shouldn't have a problem with this much memory, even though it won't be able to detect much of it, but I haven't tested it.

To put it in perspective, I had a system with an AMD Athlon X2 5000+ and a 8400GS graphics card that ran Windows 98, but choked on installing any drivers that gave it half-reasonable performance. I ran it on 640x480 with no drivers for a day or so before upgrading to XP and giving it up as a lost cause. That generation of Athlons is just too new for old tech like the DOS-based Windows OS to run, and I daresay the chipset will trip it up as well.

If I were you, I'd be installing Virtual PC 2k4/2k7 and running it on that. Chicago was unstable, slow and buggy enough on real hardware, so I wouldn't be too concerned about performance losses on VMs. I suppose you could try DOSbox too, if you want something different.

However, it's worth noting that the early builds of Chicago have more in common with Windows 3.x than Windows 4.x, so if you really do want to run it on a physical PC (which, I reiterate, would be a pretty bad idea...), your best bet, as z180 said, is to install a DOS like FreeDOS, and install 3.1 before trying an upgrade. Keep in mind you'll need to tweak the MaxPhysPage setting in SYSTEM.INI (which can be done by following the steps here). Start it off with the value at 20000, then try 10000, and keep going down from there. If you get it booting, great. If not... well, don't say we didn't warn you

Oh, and back up your data before you try anything if you haven't already. Chicago's an old OS but it is still a beta, and it's better to be safe than sorry.

Yes, Chicago works on DOSBox, also pretty good.

What about a new PC that i just got:
P4 1.5 GHz (will try to underclock)
256MB RAM
80GB HDD
Matrox G550+ 32 MB RAM GPU?
Will this run Chicago ex. 440, 337?

That's much better and may work...

What about something even older?
Celeron 633 (maybe can underclock)
126 MB RAM + 2 MB GPU SiS (min. 32 MB RAM)
80 GB Maxtor IDE + 20 GB IDE (WinME)
SAMSUNG CD-ROM

That should work.

I will now try Chicago 224. I'll see does it work.

Well, can't say much else than good luck... Let us know on the results.

Maybe i will get something even older, God knows when.

I think that both Windows 3.1x and Early Chicago Builds require you to use 256MB of RAM.

3.1x doesn't require 256mb of memory. I'm running it on VPC2004 with 32mb and it works just fine. I'd say 128mb for chicago is o.k., since it's very close to 3.1x yet has a different UI.

3.1X will do fine with as little as 8 MB, Chicago works OK with 64...

Still didn't try this, i should get an HDD because i don't want to waste a week for setting up the PC over and over (i have a good copy of WinME.)

I've had windows 95 (SP1) running an 16MB. Might not have been the fastest out there, but it worked.

You have to remember that when chicago and win95/98 were coming out, the usual config was something in the order of 10's of MB. A box with something like 128 MB was a fairly fancy peice of kit.

Windows 3.1 is designed to run less than 1 GB ram. Usually, this restriction is imposed by DOS's emm386.exe (which limits to 64 MB, i think). You have to diddle the 'PageOverCommit=' in system.ini[386enh] section, to reduce the value from the default 4 to something like 2. POC is responsible for doing things like setting the swapper file so that swapper + memory = poc × memory.

Windows 95 isn't designed for that. For the sort of kit you have i'd recommend something more modern, like win98se.

Nice words. I would also recomend Windows 98 (build 1998, needs 24mb RAM) or Windows 98SE (build 2222, needs 24mb RAM).