[OFFER] Windows 95 Japanese Beta 323

[merlix]

I brought a box of MSDN disks and it had a few disks that were the Microsoft CD-R Blue/White that were talked about a while back, on one disk there was a beta copy of Windows 95 J build 323, now this disk is just a CD-R so is not official in any way but having installed it using PCEM and installing DOS 5, copied the files from the CD to the hard disk and ran setup.exe, it asked for a previous version of windows disk, I used my windows 3.1 disk 1 and it accepted that and installed.

Now as far as I can tell its not localized to Japanese, all the applications I ran appeared in English, but the keyboard system supported Japanese input.

The build on the about box does say 323, whilst the BETA readme says build 320, so I imagine that 323 is specific Japanese build of 320. (Ignore the weird licensed to name, when I was installing it, the keyboard was set to kanji and so wrote something in there)



Link https://mega.nz/#!teRgyBLb!5Jwg4Vwtq-v6 ... U8e5k_Obvw

[Edness]

I have some questions about the legitimacy of this. Besides the fact that this seems to be just a file-by-file copy into a .ZIP file, most of the files seem to have been made on January 31, 1995 or earlier. Now that's fine, but with the exception of these 3 random files being made after Jan 31, 1995.

That's kinda odd, that they're made after February 1, 1995, since the closest build that's on the FTP is Build 324 and every single file seems to be dated February 1.

Closest files I could find that has the date of February 8, 1995 is in Build 331 (which has all files dated February 9) and for February 14, 1995, closest build seems to be Build 337 (February 15)

Not to mention that the build you've uploaded seems to have the file dates scattered all over the place, unlike the other builds...


Hoping to hear some answers about this

[Courage]

Yup, this seems to be an English build with Japanese support. There are later localization enabled builds as well (where the UI is in English), the most well-known being 720 and 842.

Great job on the find!

As for Edness, this isn't a Interim Build CD-R released to more places, like 337, so I'd doubt MS would put the same effort into changing the file dates and packing them into CABs. Also, if I remember correctly, some other Windows 95 builds in other languages (like 435, for instance) are dated later than those same builds in English, so these files could very well be real.

Anyway, here's some screenshots of this build:



(You can just continue here, no other stuff needed.)



(This bootscreen is static; no Windows logos anywhere.)



(Exchange is entirely in Japanese here for some reason.)

[Overdoze]

File dates aren't a definitive proof of anything since localized or special releases of Windows 95 were branched off and thus didn't follow the main pattern.

[WindowsNeptune]

Well one of my friend mis-configured sth about harddisk of VPC, and here is the error message he gots:

Yeah, OFS... this kind of file system can be found in Cairo. So the project Cairo is So early？

[merlix]

Edness, you are right it is a copy of a directory from a CD-R, i didnt want to make an ISO, because on the disk there were full retail versions of VC 4 and WINNT 3.5, there was also some partial files for beta of VB 4, I'm looking through the rest of the disks to see if I can find a version with an install, I also found more updated VB 4 files as well. I may just copy those as is maybe still useful in some way. On other disc I did find windows beta 490, but looks like there are several dumps of that one.

These are from a box of discs from a microsoft partner, I am still sorting through it, so hopefully more discoveries await.

[Courage]

Edness, you are right it is a copy of a directory from a CD-R, i didnt want to make an ISO, because on the disk there were full retail versions of VC 4 and WINNT 3.5, there was also some partial files for beta of VB 4, I'm looking through the rest of the disks to see if I can find a version with an install, I also found more updated VB 4 files as well. I may just copy those as is maybe still useful in some way. On other disc I did find windows beta 490, but looks like there are several dumps of that one.

These are from a box of discs from a microsoft partner, I am still sorting through it, so hopefully more discoveries await.

Those partial VB4 files would be interesting, as well as the 490 dump, seeing as there is a possibility that it could be a unique copy. Good luck mate!

[Battler]

And if the Visual C(++) 4 on the disc is Japanese, that would be interesting as well.

[Overdoze]

I'd kindly ask you to dump anything you can, as you might have some cool new stuff.

[sdawncl]

Edness, you are right it is a copy of a directory from a CD-R, i didnt want to make an ISO, because on the disk there were full retail versions of VC 4 and WINNT 3.5, there was also some partial files for beta of VB 4, I'm looking through the rest of the disks to see if I can find a version with an install, I also found more updated VB 4 files as well. I may just copy those as is maybe still useful in some way. On other disc I did find windows beta 490, but looks like there are several dumps of that one.

These are from a box of discs from a microsoft partner, I am still sorting through it, so hopefully more discoveries await.

For the completeness could you dump the whole disc to ISO. Would be better if you could also scan the disc cover art.
Many thanks