Correct, Retail Full was never available on CD-ROM, only on floppy disk.
The reason being, at the time 95 was released, it was impossible to provide support for all of the different, incompatible, CD-ROM drives and controllers out there. For the same reason, very few PC BIOSes supported booting directly from CD-ROM.
OEMs, on the other hand would only provide their CDs and boot floppies with their new hardware. They knew exactly what CD drive and controller was in their machines, so they would add their CD-ROM driver to the boot floppy.
Upgrade CDs depended entirely on whatever CD-ROM driver was already installed on the MS-DOS/Win3.1 system.
If Microsoft had tried to support that, they would have had to provide boot floppy disks with hundreds of DOS mode CD-ROM/controller drivers and manuals on how to configure each one. Simpler just to put the OS on floppy disk and let the user sort out their CD-ROM later.
"If Microsoft had tried to support that, they would have had to provide boot floppy disks with hundreds of DOS mode CD-ROM/controller drivers and manuals on how to configure each one. Simpler just to put the OS on floppy disk and let the user sort out their CD-ROM later."
In reality, only the Driver "OAKCDROM.SYS" (Oak Technologies manufacture the Semi-Conductors fitted into almost all CD-ROM IDE Drives.) But in Windows 95 it didn't exist yet ... it was created for Windows 98 to date creating a bootable CD-ROM with Windows 95 is very simple. In addition to the fact that even motherboards without booting from CD-ROM it is possible to boot them anyway using a simple program (Plop Boot Manager 5.0) from floppy
OAKCDROM.SYS is the Oak Technologies IDE/ATAPI CD-ROM driver, but in 1995, the CD-ROM types used by consumers were much more diverse than in 1998, and often proprietary (Panasonic and the like).
it was enough to buy non-proprietary CD-ROMs the problem was the motherboards (socket 5) ... very few had the ATAPI controller and boot from CD-ROM (almost none) however in 1995 with the release of Socket 7 it had practically all boot from CD-ROM and non-proprietary drivers very popular ... the problem is that Windows 95 was already in the production phase ... it was enough a year late and they would have booted like Windows 98
ATAPI only came out in 1994, so it was still very new in 1995. Also ATAPI = IDE, so the drive would work on any IDE controller so long as a driver is present. And no, most PC's people had in 1995 could not yet boot from CD, sure, cutting-edge models could, but most people didn't exactly go out and rush to buy one, in fact, even in 1998, there still weren't enough people with machines that could boot from CD-ROM, that's why Windows 98 also came with a boot floppy, which had the OAKCDROM.SYS driver.
in 1995 I agree ... almost no one had boot from CD-ROM but in 1998 practically all motherboards of the last 3 years had it ... then it is obvious that if one wanted to start Windows 98 from a 486 instead of on a Pentium then you couldn't boot from CD-ROM ... but just use 86Box in its various configurations ... Socket 7 motherboards (released in 1995) all boot from CD-ROM
Comments
1. Floppy
1) 3.5" 1.44MB + 1.68MB (DMF)
->Retail Full from Market
->Retail Upgrade from Market (No Boot Disk)
=>OEM Full from PC's manufacture
2) 3.5" 1.44MB only
->Retail Full from Microsoft Mail Order
->Retail Upgrade from Microsoft Mail Order (No Boot Disk)
3) 5.25" 1.2MB only
->Retail Full from Microsoft Mail Order
->Retail Upgrade from Microsoft Mail Order (No Boot Disk)
2. CD-ROM
1) Retail
->Retail Upgrade from Market or MSDN (No Bootable from CD or Boot Diskette)
2) OEM
->OEM Full from PC's manufacture (No Bootable from CD, but with Boot Diskette)
The reason being, at the time 95 was released, it was impossible to provide support for all of the different, incompatible, CD-ROM drives and controllers out there. For the same reason, very few PC BIOSes supported booting directly from CD-ROM.
OEMs, on the other hand would only provide their CDs and boot floppies with their new hardware. They knew exactly what CD drive and controller was in their machines, so they would add their CD-ROM driver to the boot floppy.
Upgrade CDs depended entirely on whatever CD-ROM driver was already installed on the MS-DOS/Win3.1 system.
If Microsoft had tried to support that, they would have had to provide boot floppy disks with hundreds of DOS mode CD-ROM/controller drivers and manuals on how to configure each one. Simpler just to put the OS on floppy disk and let the user sort out their CD-ROM later.
In reality, only the Driver "OAKCDROM.SYS" (Oak Technologies manufacture the Semi-Conductors fitted into almost all CD-ROM IDE Drives.)
But in Windows 95 it didn't exist yet ... it was created for Windows 98
to date creating a bootable CD-ROM with Windows 95 is very simple.
In addition to the fact that even motherboards without booting from CD-ROM it is possible to boot them anyway using a simple program (Plop Boot Manager 5.0) from floppy
the problem was the motherboards (socket 5) ... very few had the ATAPI controller and boot from CD-ROM (almost none)
however in 1995 with the release of Socket 7 it had practically all boot from CD-ROM and non-proprietary drivers very popular ...
the problem is that Windows 95 was already in the production phase ... it was enough a year late and they would have booted like Windows 98