i finally got MPLAB 3.4 to work. it definitely is much slicker than using
the raw DOS MPASM and MPSIM. the quirk i encountered may be something in
the way my system is setup, or may be a general Win95 problem.

after installing MPLAB, i could follow along with the single source example
in TUTOR.PDF up to the point of building the project. at that time, all the
window title bars would gray out. 30 seconds later, a message box appears,
"Application timed out. Continue waiting". choose 'yes' and you'll wait
forever, choose 'no' and the compiler results window will report "unable to
find output file sample.hex"

seems MPLAB spawns MPASM in an iconized DOS window, passes the command line
parameters, and waits for it to return. you never will see this window
unless you bring up the system tray. at this time, you cannot switch to
other windows. after the message box appears, click on the MS_DOS icon, and
the window will come up. as soon as it has focus, it closes. then choosing
'yes' in the message box immediately displays a successful compilation in
the build status window.

if you run MPASM as a standalone in a DOS window, it does its thing,
displays the results, and then says "hit any key to continue". i assume the
iconized DOS window is waiting for this keystroke, while MPLAB is waiting
for the DOS window to close, deadlocking the whole system until it times
out.

an awkward work-around, but i think the extra 30 seconds is worth it to be
able to use the full power of the IDE.

also, there are two possible issues i haven't tested thoroughly. as i was
thrashing around trying to get it to run it seemed:

a. MPLAB is only happy if installed in the default c:\Win\Program
Files\Mplab\
b. i think the language tool needs to be explicitly loaded, even though it
appears MPLAB initializes pointed to MPASM.

i wouldn't bet the farm on either of these statements, but if you have a
problem they would be worth doing.