Run Windows 2000 on a DEC Alpha with a new es40 fork

allenrb

Emulating Alpha on x86_64 is definitely not a thing the Alpha designers foresaw. :-)

baron3dl

did anyone ever run W2k on an ES40 in production? the only dec hardware I ever touched that ran windows was an AlphaServer 1000, and my assignment was to get it back to running VMS. though, I'll admit now, i goldbricked a bit and spent some time trying out Digital UNIX first.

_blk

OK, I imagine that involved quite some challenges. Well done. But why? I fail to see a purpose. Is it just a DOOM runs on my smart toaster kind of thing or something that has production value?

andrewjf

This is pretty cool, it brings back memories. Thanks for posting. I used to manage Tru64 (Alpha) and OpenVMS (VAX and Alpha). Mostly Oracle DB and whatever they called their App development suite (horrible, horrible software) for a University's ERP system (called Banner) and infrastructure (Multinet on OpenVMS/VAX for DNS, DHCP, mail, etc). After that I moved on to AIX on Power5 for Oracle on HACMP and Veritas Cluster. Such a different world from what we have now. I have an old AlphaServer ES47 running OpenVMS and Power5 560Q running AIX in my garage

bartvk

Somehow, Windows 2000 does not look dated to me. It looks functional and usable, and maybe even somewhat fresh. I never actually used it long-term (during college, started using Linux), so it can't be nostalgic. Anyone else feel the same?

hsbauauvhabzb

From Google, DEC Alpha is a RISC architecture, but I can’t see what es40 is, unless it’s just a fork code name?

orra

This is really cool! There have been many DEC Alpha emulators over the years, but none have been capable of running Windows NT.

crmd

This put a smile on my face. I have a random, vivid memory from college of being in a university IT cave trying and failing to install Windows 2000 RC3 on a DEC Alphastation 600. My friends and I were scratching our heads when somebody figured out that RC2 (the build referenced in this blog post) was the last Windows build to support Alpha. If I remember correctly we installed Red Hat Linux ~5-6.0 on the DEC and used it for various shenanigans. In retrospect it would have been fun to get Tru64 running on it instead…

mrandish

I've heard the new JIT in this emulator can now exceed the speed of a 1.25GHz EV68CB processor ES45 for single core/thread.

jeberle

I love how egregiously bad CDE looks compared to Windows. Whoever made that call, dios mio.

consumer451

When I was a kid I visited a friend of the family at his workplace, who had a DEC Alpha on his desk. It was the first time I saw video playing in a window. It blew my little brain. IIRC, you could also resize the window while the video kept playing with no dropped frames. As a 486SX kid, the DEC Alpha felt like something from the far future to me. What would have been along those lines back then? An SGI workstation?

jasoneckert

I ran Windows 2000 Beta for years on my DEC Alphastations (4 Miatas and 4 Digital Ultimate Workstations). It ran flawlessly, and so did Office 97 for Alpha. CD-ROMs for both Windows 2000 Beta and Office 97 (for Alpha systems) came in our monthly TechNet subscription packages.

ivolimmen

Both screenshots of Windows 2000 and OpenVMS are in my opinion the peak UI's.