Nintendo 3DS runs Windows 95 via DOSBox — but takes hours to boot

A tech tinkerer decided to put the homebrew Nintendo 3DS port of DOSBox to the ultimate test — running Windows 95. Using the souped-up version of the 3DS, the “New” 3DS with additional RAM and processing power, TechTuber MetraByte was able to install the DOSBox port successfully and, subsequently, the Windows 95 operating system directly on top of that DOSBox instance. The load times involved seemed quite long, too, especially when he decided to leave the handheld alone overnight while on his first boot of Windows 95. In contrast, the OS installer only took about five minutes. However, proper mouse input support (via Touch through DOSBox) didn’t start working until well after the operating system had been launched on the hardware.

Installing Windows 95 on a 3ds and Trying to Make Music with it – YouTube

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Now, the good news first: Windows 95 does in fact run on the New Nintendo 3DS. And at least in terms of memory spec, that makes sense, since Windows 95 was made to run on as little as 4MB of RAM — though of course, that’s for x86 machines and scenarios outside of emulation. The New Nintendo 3DS’ allocation of 256MB of RAM is very slim by today’s standards, but quite good for the era of software prior to commonplace Gigabytes of RAM. However, DOSBox doesn’t only have to work with the system memory — it also has to do x86 emulation on the New Nintendo 3DS’ Arm-based hardware, which is where such a severe performance deficit is incurred.

So, while you can get Windows 95 running on a New Nintendo 3DS, there’s definitely no reason that you should. The installation will prove long and tedious, and even once you boot into the operating system, not very much of it will be usable. Not even basic MIDI audio file playback was possible when MetraByte tested Windows 95 on the New 3DS. Attempting to run his music studio software of choice also outright bluescreened the device. But the OS did seem to at least function besides that, and perhaps the lightest software may still run.

Realistically, though, if you’re doing anything with DOSBox on the New Nintendo 3DS, you definitely shouldn’t be installing Windows. Instead, you should be trying out older DOS titles that probably will work just fine in these conditions, considering how genuinely powerful the New Nintendo 3DS was and how much overhead is saved by not running Windows 95 on top of everything else.