[Info-vax] 64-bit Windows on Alpha

[Ben Lambert]

I appreciate this isn't VMS related, but of interest due to the connection with Alpha (and Itanium)

A fascinating story has popped up on Raymond Chens blog (The Old New Thing) regarding both the development of 64-bit Windows for Itanium, and a strange issue with porting the (legendary) Space Cadet pinball game that has come with multiple iterations of 32-bit Windows from Win95 to WinXP to the 64-bit version(s) of Windows:

1) Due to a lack of Itanium hardware, and the state of the Itanium simulators at the time, the team instead opted to port 32-bit Windows to 64-Windows using Alphas instead - noting that the Alpha version would never actually ship.  They used their Alphas that were lying around after the Alpha version of Win2000 was cancelled (thanks Compaq...); Win NT and Win2000 on Alpha were 32-bit despite the processors 64-bit capability.

So theoretically there's a 64-bit version of Windows XP/Server 2003 that 'ran' on Alpha hidden away in the internals of Microsoft.

2) Porting Space Cadet pinball from 32-bit to 64-bit on Alpha resulted in a collision detection bug that couldn't be fixed and so the game was removed from 64-bit Windows until a fix was found for a later version.

References: 

Earlier post about Space Cadet pinball issues:
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20121218-00/?p=5803

New post about porting Windows to 64-bit using Alpha:
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20220106-00/?p=106122

A retrocomputing enthusiasts attempts to identify the Space Cadet 64-bit issue, on Windows 64-bit for Itanium:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EPTfOTC4Jw