It's been a year. Most of this release is about making windows95 feel less like a sealed-off curiosity and more like a tiny computer that's actually plugged into yours.
- Z: drive: Pick any folder on your real machine and it shows up inside Windows 95 as the
Z:drive — long filenames and all. A newW95TOOLSguest agent maps\\HOSTautomatically on boot, and SMBREAD_RAWmakes file copies roughly 20× faster than before. (#352, #364, #366) - Shared clipboard: Copy text on your host, paste it in Notepad. Copy in Windows 95, paste it back out. The guest agent talks to the host over the VMware backdoor port, so no networking required. (#361)
- CD-ROM: Mount an
.isoand it appears asD:. Install things the way you did in 1997. (#362) - Real internet (sort of): A raw TCP relay lets the guest reach beyond port 80 — IRC, FTP, telnet, whatever ancient client you can dig up. Also fixed a v86 NE2000 ring-buffer wrap that was quietly stalling downloads. (#358, #363)
- Nicer to look at: The launcher got a 98.css facelift, and there's a new info bar with live CPU/disk/net sparklines that tucks away until you hover. (#347, #345, #349)
- Quality of life: Seamless mouse via VBMOUSE (no more pointer-lock jail), "Boot from scratch" in the Machine menu, "Start without state" is always available, and your files survive disk-image upgrades. A v86 fix stops windowed DOS boxes from corrupting the screen. (#344, #357, #360, #365, #359)
Full Changelog: v4.0.0...v5.0.0