https://virtuallyfun.com/2023/05/15/windows-2000-64-bit-for-alpha-axp/ Skip to primary content Virtually Fun Fun with Virtualization Virtually Fun Search [ ] [Search] Main menu * Home * Emulators + jDOSBox + Qemu + SIMH + Virtual PC * Operating Systems + CP/M + MS-DOS + OS/2 + Windows NT Post navigation - Previous Windows 2000 64-bit for Alpha AXP Posted on May 15, 2023 by tenox (this is a guest post by Antoni Sawicki aka tenox) Recently, hinted by people on Discord, Neozeed found a Win64 compiler for AXP64 / ALPHA64, that came in as part of Platform SDK from 1999. This was to let Windows developers test compile their programs to make sure they are "64bit ready", before the hardware was even available. However, as this was a cross-compiler from IA32 to IA64 and AXP32 to AXP64, there was no actual way of running any of the binaries. Until Itanium finally came out, after long delays. Sadly, 64-bit Alpha AXP Windows was never released outside of Redmond. Just for fun, I compiled Alpha64 version of Aclock - with zero hopes of ever being able to run it. There are some surviving machines with AXP64 at Microsoft Archives. In fact I saw one with my own eyes, last time I visited there: DEC Alpha with AXP64 Windows at Microsoft Archives.DEC Alpha with AXP64 Windows, at Microsoft Archives The machine in picture above was featured in a blog post by Raymond Chen, which will give you background info on the whole Alpha 64bit situation. Unfortunately nothing ever leaves Microsoft Archives, unless you have a court order or SVP approval. And that would be the end of the story... if not for one reader, who contacted Neozeed after his previous post, and shared a disk image... containing a 64bit version of Windows 2000 for Alpha AXP! The reader got it from a lot of random lot of hard disks bought from an e-waste, years ago, and completely forgot about it until they saw the blog post! Having a PWS500 with ZuluSCSI I was able to slap on the image on an SD card and boot it up: [splash]Windows 2000 Alpha64 Splash Screen The system BSOD shortly after. Turns out, this is a checked / debug build of Windows and requires a kernel debugger attached. Initially WinDbg and kd.exe refused to work with this, as the target CPU did not match the host. After some deliberation and help from friends, apparently alphakd.exe can be run on x86 machine to cross debug an Alpha target. Most importantly it works with AXP64! Another problem was that the system came up with "Found New Hardware" wizard and there was no functioning keyboard and mouse to click through it. Yes I tried safe mode, VGA mode, etc., but nothing worked. The system was completely stuck on this dialog: [newhw] Fortunately, the network card worked. We build and hacked in to the registry an rlogin daemon. Finally solved the PNP fuckup by remotely executing a VBScript that clicked through 20+ "found new hardware" and "install unsigned driver" dialogs. Eventually, a PCI to ISA bridge was found and keyboard and mouse came up! [aclock-axp64-1024x818]Aclock running on 64bit Windows on Alpha AXP Unfortunately there are no identifying marks that would definitely prove that this is a 64bit build. The only way to tell is because there is no WOW, even for AXP32. You can't run any 32bit Alpha binaries. It will only run executables built with the ALPHA64 compiler. This also means that there is no native compiler for this. You have to cross compile on NT4 or 2KRC. However if you going to build anything for AXP64 I can run and test it for you If you want to see this live in action. We going to be exhibiting on VCF West 2023 in August! Come and see us! This entry was posted in 64bit computing, DEC Alpha, guest post, win64 by tenox. Bookmark the permalink. 18 thoughts on "Windows 2000 64-bit for Alpha AXP" 1. [16ba3616]. on May 15, 2023 at 2:58 pm said: First Julie Larson-Green's tablet, now this? if you don't know what I'm talking about: https://betawiki.net/ wiki/Windows_8_build_9200.16456_(win8_gdr_soc_intel) Reply | 2. [16ba3616]. on May 15, 2023 at 3:06 pm said: By the way, there probably is an identifying mark somewhere: the registry. Check HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion! BuildLabEx Reply | 3. [8965a679]Ryuzaki on May 15, 2023 at 3:50 pm said: It might be worth checking cmd's "set" command if the PROCESSOR_* environment variables have any interesting information. Reply | + [b8fb]neozeed on May 15, 2023 at 4:06 pm said: I should append it, but yes its: PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE=ALPHA64 PROCESSOR_IDENTIFIER=DEC-221164 PROCESSOR_LEVEL=21164 PROCESSOR_REVISION=2 Reply | 4. [756558c3]Jon Forrest on May 15, 2023 at 4:28 pm said: In the early to mid 1990s I was the system manager for the group in UC Berkeley's Computer Science Dept. that created Postgres. I worked directly for Mike Stonebraker. As a side project I decided to try to port Postgres to Windows NT (at the time version 3.5.1). Since this wasn't an official project I had to "liberate" a 16MB 66Mhz Pentium PC to do the porting. It was dismally slow but somehow I was able to get Postgres to the point where I had something to show Mike. He was quite impressed. I told him how slow the PC was and how I badly needed something faster. He said he'd take care of it. So, one day a big box arrived. It was from NeTpower and contained a PC with a Mips processor and 64MB(!) of RAM. It ran Windows NT! With that box I was able to make significant progress to the point where I could run the Wisconsin Benchmark. At the time, this was considered a require prerequisite for any RDBMS. To the point of this article, I don't remember if that Mips system was 32-bits or 64-bits. Does anybody know if a 64-bit version of Windows NT for Mips existed back then? Reply | + [05e2]raijinkai on May 15, 2023 at 6:53 pm said: NT4 MIPS was only ever made in 32bit flavor. Even the legendary "SGI Indy" version (don't confuse with the MIPS/SGI Jazz/Magnum which is already emulated in QEMU). What actually was available were some SMP MIPS machines. But generally, NT MIPS was killed just too soon. Reply | 5. [756558c3]Jon Forrest on May 15, 2023 at 4:33 pm said: I just read the article by Raymond Chen mentioned in this page. I should have done so before posting my story. I see that the version of Windows I ran on Mips must have been 32-bits. Sorry for the noise. Jon Forrest Reply | + [b8fb]neozeed on May 15, 2023 at 4:35 pm said: nah, it's all okay! It's been tremendously exciting time! Reply | 6. [5dde79a8]dmitry Grinberg on May 15, 2023 at 4:56 pm said: > and shared a disk image And where can the interested public get a copy? Reply | 7. [61b2a014]starfrost on May 15, 2023 at 5:10 pm said: To clarify, this is actually a (very) early build of Windows XP, not Windows 2000. The first build of XP was 2197. You can see this with the "Whistler Windows 2001 Professional" branding, with Whistler being the codename of Windows XP. Builds 2202 and 2211 are available online. Judging from what I know about 2211, the design of Explorer should be slightly different, and if it's available (I doubt it, it ooften wasn't in early ports of Windows to new architectures), IE should call itself version 5.6. Reply | 8. [61b2a014]starfrost on May 15, 2023 at 5:14 pm said: Additionally (as 2210 is a bit earlier than 2211), you can look for these things: * The copyright date in Winver is 2000, it's 1999 in Win2k (2195) * ASR may already be in setup. It was in 2211... * Ability to convert disks to GPT in Disk Management * "Hotpluggable Devices" shortcut in Control Panel * Arial font in Setup instead of Tahoma There's other stuff but this should be a general gist of what changed on the user side. Only if IE exists: * HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion \Winlogon\LogonType DWORD, set it to 1. The login screen should be similar to Windows Neptune Reply | 9. [5f9c4951]Alex Shpilkin on May 15, 2023 at 6:37 pm said: No WoW? Have they cut NTVDM out of non-x86 versions already at that point? My understanding was that early non-x86 NT releases had a full-blown x86 emulator (see e.g. http://bytepointer.com/ resources/old_new_thing/ 20060525_178_using_yoda_on_an_x86_may_be_hazardous_to_your_systems_health.htm ), which puts the lie to NTVDM being left out of x64 Windows later. Reply | + [b8fb]neozeed on May 15, 2023 at 6:53 pm said: It's the WOW that let's 32bit binaries run on 64bit platforms, WoW64? It's confusing as instead of moving system32 to system32, they kept the 64bit binaries in system32, and moved the 32bit system to SysWOW64. To further confuse things, there is a Sys32x86, but it's empty. Even the printers don't keep the same naming as in the spool\drivers it is: * axp64 * ia64 * w32alpha * w32mips * w32ppc * w32x86 * win40 Anyways yes there is no NTVDM, no DOS. BUT there is a posix.dll & os2/os2srv/os2ss as well. Reply | + [05e2]raijinkai on May 15, 2023 at 7:00 pm said: He isn't talking about NTVDM/WoW16 duo, but WoW64... Better know internally at MS as Wx86. That's a very different beast which latter got licensed by DEC to make their Fx32! emulator (which also isn't present), and is the foundation of the modern WoW64 in x86-64 builds and the ARM x86 emulation layer found in Win10/11 ARM builds. Reply | 10. [90f516fa]cfwlr_cfwlr on May 15, 2023 at 7:08 pm said: Aye, can you share the disk image? Would like to try and get things working on my own workstation. Reply | 11. [05e2f0e1]raijinkai on May 15, 2023 at 7:12 pm said: Someone knows if the 64bit version of "Windows 2000 Datacenter Server", whose screenshots were published in some japanese sites, was actually an AXP64 build? Or it was Itanium already? Reply | + [b8fb]neozeed on May 15, 2023 at 7:56 pm said: if the spraypaint was on the side of the logo it appears to be itanium, if its over the logo it's axp. I think. I'am no way authoritative to say anything. Reply | o [16ba]. on May 15, 2023 at 8:17 pm said: nope, whoever did it just drew it over the top for pro and on the side for server Reply | Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked * [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] Comment * [ ] Name * [ ] Email * [ ] Website [ ] [ ] Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. [Post Comment] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] D[ ] This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. 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