Opening Notepad, a DOS prompt, and Paint do not faithfully represent the app load speed experience on that hardware. Try Microsoft Office, or CorelDraw, etc.
Word 97 opens instantly on my Pentium MMX 200 Mhz with Windows 98 SE (64MB PC66 SDRAM, 8 GB CF Card running in PIO Mode 4). This is a little faster than my Surface Pro 9 opening Word 365.