iPad Pro How to install Windows 95 on iPad Pro M4?

[TSE]

Serious question.

My father has a collection of old DOS games on floppy disks that he'd like to play.

I was wondering if the iPad Pro is capable of both booting into Windows 95 and reading floppy disks.

Is this at all possible?

 

[sparksd]

No on both.

 

[rui no onna]

Are those floppy disks even readable?

I feel like failure rate on those was super high.

We’re seeing emulators on the App Store now. Maybe we’ll get DOSBox eventually.

 

[Jack Neill]

There is this..

DOS Zone | DOS games in browser

Ultimate collection of free dos games to play online in browser. Search for your favorite game and play in browser!

dos.zone

There is so much DOS abandonware out there too, that I bet anything he wants to play is ready to download somewhere with DOS Box

 

[Shirasaki]

There is no avenue to install DOS somehow on iPad “natively” (not bare metal of course, but not even an app)
iDOS was pulled by the developer after immense pressure from Apple. I still have it installed on my iPad.
Hopefully DOSbox can finally come to iOS and allow people to load programs in it.

 

[Rafterman]

There is no avenue to install DOS somehow on iPad “natively” (not bare metal of course, but not even an app)
iDOS was pulled by the developer after immense pressure from Apple. I still have it installed on my iPad.
Hopefully DOSbox can finally come to iOS and allow people to load programs in it.

I still have iDOS too, which restores to my iPad on every new upgrade. I hate to delete it

 

[Macalway]

Alas,no. No Win95 for us.

 

[Shirasaki]

I still have iDOS too, which restores to my iPad on every new upgrade. I hate to delete it

At least Apple still keeps the app on their server for users who downloaded it for now. Some apps I love a lot has been removed from the App Store, meaning I can no longer restore it as part of the iCloud backup.

 

[utterer]

RetroArch for iOS/iPad OS (available here) now includes the DOSBox Pure emulator core. I haven't personally tried it on iOS, but have had a lot of success with RetroArch on MacOS loading DOS games directly from this core. It simplifies the process to run and install DOS based games vs the normal DOSBox as long as you have an ISO or a complete install in a folder similar to SCUMM VM (which is also on iOS now too).

 

[Macalway]

So can I use RetroArch to run DOS OS, and not games? It's free and I installed it, but it looks like it's just for games. I don't have time to explore it. But since it's free I'm all for it! Looks like a great product in general.

Btw, after I posted this I ran across a page saying the original iDos (3) is now in review. This is from the developer:

"Update 2024-05-08: "Your app is in review but is requiring additional time." Makes me wonder if the reviewer is trying to play a game through.""

So they are taking their time

 

[utterer]

So can I use RetroArch to run DOS OS, and not games?

It is a DOS environment that you point to either an ISO you created of your DOS game CD or a folder containing a complete game install. On the Mac side it lets you either install the game to a folder from that CD and then run it or run the exe in the folder.

I tested a little bit of the iOS version and I was able to run The Adventures of Willy Beamish and Mech Warrior 2, both DOS games by just pointing them to the ISOs I created from the original disks. I ran the install.exe or equivalent and sent it to a virtual c drive and the next time it was there and I ran it no problem. The audio was very choppy though on iPhone 12 Pro but still really interesting to see. In theory, Windows 95 should be able to be installed in DOSBox Pure to run Windows 95 era games since you can on Mac.

 

[jb310]

I have seen videos of people running Windows 95 on the iPad using emulators...

But getting information off of old floppy disks, and running them in DOS on a Windows 95 emulator on an iPad? Now that I haven't seen at all. 😅