There is most certainly a tons of compatibility stuff built into access 97.
In fact act, as far as I know, access97 can actually import, and grab data
going all the way back to the original ms-access that is now more THEN 10
years old. We are talking about version 1.0!
No doubt these abilities cost Microsoft a lot of pizza and pop to implement.
So, yes, ms-acces97 can read/open access95, and even versions like access
2.0., and even farther pack to access 1.0
I am not sure how far back access97 can go, but I do believe it can open can
convert access 2.0, which would indeed be a very old mdb file.