Chicago Build 490 International Versions (New Builds!)

[ReflectiaX]

I'm starting to go through my collection now and look for things I have which aren't currently listed on the FTP or on the BA wiki. The first thing I've run across is an "International Versions" disc of Chicago build 490. I have the disc copying now via Alcohol 120%; however, some of the disc is unreadable. The person I obtained this disc from didn't take very good care of their collection, so there are issues like gashes in the data film of some of the discs (meaning there's now no data to be read in those spots). Bummer.

The good news is that the only one of the international builds on this disc that appears to be affected by the missing region of data, is the French build! That's good news because the English and French builds of 490 are both on the FTP. The additional regions are:

Brazil
German
Italian
Spanish
Paneuro: From the release notes: "Paneuro - Contains a Pan European pre-release version of Windows 95. The Pan European version is an English version of Windows 95 that also includes Cyrillic (Russian, Bulgarian, Byelorussian, Ukrainian), Greek, Latin 2 (Albanian, Polish, Croatian, Czech, Hungarian, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian), and Turkish support."

Mr. Pijey: What are your thoughts on how I should proceed with this one insofar as the FTP? I've got the disc ripping per your guide, so it's skipping the bad regions; however, skipped regions means it won't be a truly complete release. I'd like to individually upload the builds in their native regions, as part and parcel of preserving them, since they appear to be fine. There are other things on the disc as well, but...it's your call on this! Either way, I'll still upload the builds somewhere just to share here in the thread.

More soon!

UPDATE: You can download the Brazil, German, Italian, Spanish, and Paneuro builds here: https://u.teknik.io/diMwM.rar

[BF10]

Great find on these international version of the builds! Yes, beforehand only English and French was leaked and KenOath had a copy of a Portuguese version.

Hopefully the bad regions of the data won't affect how the build installs. I'm assuming that these builds still require to be upgraded from Windows 3.1x.

[LangsamSpieler]

That's correct, they must and MS-DOS is not enough as base.

[mrpijey]

Well, please send up the complete dump as we can use it as a reference if we find an unbroken copy. But maybe you can also copy out the releases that are complete so we know which ones are OK and can be released...

[ReflectiaX]

Well, please send up the complete dump as we can use it as a reference if we find an unbroken copy. But maybe you can also copy out the releases that are complete so we know which ones are OK and can be released...

Sounds like a plan! Thanks for the feedback.

[Battler]

While of course all of these are very interesting, the most interesting is the Brazilian Portuguese version as it's the only other Windows pre-release we have in that language, the other being a Memphis build whose exact build number I don't remember right now that we've had for years now. So very nice find, thank you!

[mrpijey]

I've added the uploaded ones to the FTP. What part of the disc was unreadable? Was there any langs that didn't cut it in the upload?

[LangsamSpieler]

The Italian Beta Version do have the old WIndows 95 Logo on

Code: Select all

It's save now to turn of the Computer

and it have a muddy Startbutton flag too.

Old Windows 95 Logo


Muddy Startbutton

[ReflectiaX]

I've added the uploaded ones to the FTP. What part of the disc was unreadable? Was there any langs that didn't cut it in the upload?

I'm not sure, to be honest--not from the Alcohol 120% dump, at least. When manually dumping, the French build was the only one that had issues. There were problematic reads for resources elsewhere on the disc as well, but none were located in the directories of those other beta builds.

I was a bit bummed to see Alcohol 120% only reported sector numbers it had issues reading. Do you happen to know offhand if there's an option that will correlate a bad sector read with which file it's unsuccessfully trying to read? If so, then I'll also use that option by default--and will accordingly re-dump this disc just to get a more informative log!

[mrpijey]

I am not aware of such tool but there should be a way, but could you still dump and scan the disc, even with errors? So we can keep it as reference if a full working disc pops up. Be sure to have DPM activated as well.

[thesusthing]

they should have brought back the windows 95 ui for windows 10