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

50 pointsby jandeboevrietoday at 1:47 PM23 commentsview on HN

Comments

bartvktoday at 5:05 PM

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?

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andrewjftoday at 4:39 PM

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

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orratoday at 5:52 PM

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

allenrbtoday at 3:42 PM

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

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baron3dltoday at 3:44 PM

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.

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hsbauauvhabzbtoday at 5:14 PM

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

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_blktoday at 4:26 PM

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?