I don't know that anybody has been successful in running emplode with Windows 95. The USB support in Win95 is spotty and unreliable at best, and usually won't work at all.
I am surprised that Win98 won't see your tape drive. The area of greatest improvement from Win95 to Win98 is in the handling of peripherals. Even if your tape drive isn't PNP (plug 'n' play) Win98 should see it and ask for the driver disk. Most tape drives Win98 will already have a generic driver in its archives that will work.
You might want to check and see if your tape drive is properly installed -- perhaps a termination problem that doesn't bother Win95 makes your tape drive invisible to Win98. Does your tape drive run from its own card (ISA or PCI, maybe even SCSI?) or does it use the more common approach of piggybacking on the FDD (floppy disk drive) controller? If the latter, termination errors are quite possible.
Of course, anyone who has his own racing yacht... you should be able to afford a whole new computer, never mind upgrading to Win98. Or, more likely, the racing yacht is the reason you can't afford it...
tanstaafl.
"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"