[Info-vax] 64-bit Windows on Alpha

[Andrew Brehm]

On 09/01/2022 19:54, Ben Lambert wrote:
> 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.
> 


Wikipedia mentions that

"During development, there was a build for the Alpha which was abandoned in the final stages of development (between RC1 and RC2) after Compaq announced they had dropped support for Windows NT on Alpha."

I had heard about that before.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_2000