Home windows 2000 64-bit for Alpha AXP
(it is a visitor publish by Antoni Sawicki aka tenox)
Just lately, hinted by folks on Discord, Neozeed found an AXP64 / ALPHA64 compiler on Platform SDK from 1999. The compiler was meant for builders to check/compile packages to ensure they’re “64bit prepared”. Nevertheless, there was no precise manner of working any of the binaries. Till IA64 got here out a minimum of. Sadly, 64-bit Alpha AXP Home windows was by no means launched exterior of Redmond.
Only for enjoyable, I compiled Alpha64 model of Aclock – with zero hopes of ever with the ability to run it. There are some surviving machines with AXP64 at Microsoft Archives. Actually I noticed one with my very own eyes, final time I visited there:
The machine in image above was featured in a blog post by Raymond Chen, which provides you with background information on the entire Alpha 64bit scenario. Sadly nothing ever leaves Microsoft Archives, until you could have a court docket order or SVP approval.
And that will be the top of the story… if not for one reader, who contacted Neozeed after his earlier publish, and shared a disk picture, containing a 64bit model of Home windows 2000 for Alpha AXP! The reader acquired it from a number of random onerous disks purchased from an e-waste, years in the past and utterly forgot about it till they noticed the weblog publish!
Having a PWS500 with ZuluSCSI I used to be capable of slap on the picture on an SD card and boot it up:
The system BSOD shortly after. Seems, it is a checked / debug construct of Home windows and requires a kernel debugger connected. After some preliminary deliberation and assist from pals, seems that alphakd.exe might be run on 386/x86 machine to cross debug Alpha goal. Most significantly it really works with AXP64!
One other drawback was that the system got here up with “Discovered New {Hardware}” wizard and there was no functioning keyboard and mouse to click on via it. Sure I attempted protected mode, VGA mode, and so forth., however nothing labored. The system was utterly caught on this dialog:
Happily, the community card labored. We construct and hacked in to the registry an rlogin daemon. Lastly we solved the PNP fuckup by remotely executing a VBScript that clicked via 20+ “discovered new {hardware}” and “set up unsigned driver” dialogs. Finally, a PCI to ISA bridge was discovered and keyboard and mouse got here up!
Sadly there are not any figuring out marks that will positively show that it is a 64bit construct. The one method to inform is as a result of there isn’t any WOW, even for AXP32 and you may’t run any 32bit Alpha binaries. It should solely run executables constructed with the ALPHA64 compiler. This additionally implies that there isn’t any native compiler for this. You need to cross compile on NT4 or 2KRC and solely can run it on 64bit. Nevertheless should you going to construct something for AXP64 I can run and check it for you ????