You Can Now Run Windows 3.11 and Windows 95 on the A500 Mini

You Can Now Run Windows 3.11 and Windows 95 on the A500 Mini

Last Updated on June 17, 2022

The Amiga died because of the PC market, driven by IBM compatibles and Windows. But what if an A500 Mini could run Windows? Would that balance things out a bit?

Of course, modern operating systems will not run on an Amiga, never mind an A500 Mini. But with the help of the Pandory firmware, DOSBox, and some old Windows installation disk images, it is possible to relive the magic of being a turncoat in the mid-1990s and chucking the magic of the Amiga away for a moment and play with Bill Gates’ brainchild.

(I feel so dirty just writing about it.)

At this stage, DOSBox isn’t optimized to run on the A500 Mini. This means you can’t expect a perfect experience. But, it is good enough to run Windows 3.11 and even Windows 95, should you want to. You may have compatibility issues with the emulated sound devices, for example, but if you know enough about DOS then you will know that they are straightforward to disable.

For most, there is probably no point to this. After all you can emulate DOS with DOSBox on most platforms, including an AGA Amiga with Kickstart 3.1+ and Windows 3.1 can run on an Amiga 2000 under PC Task. But if you abandoned the Amiga back in the day, felt guilty about switching to a PC, and then returned to the platform via the user-friendly experience of the A500 Mini, there is a nice poetry to this.

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