Friday, May 19th 2023
First Test Build of Windows 2000 64-bit Rediscovered
A 64-bit Dec Alpha C compiler was found by Virtually Fun's neozeed earlier this year - the software archeologist has been searching for various test builds of Microsoft Windows NT, including an "AXP64/ALPHA64 port," deemed extra special due to it being the first 64-bit version of Windows 2000 Professional. The small discovery of this obscure compiler was celebrated, but its functionality is ultimately not all that useful - neozeed notes that the items have been sitting within 1999 vintage Windows Platform SDKs: "It turns out that the AXP64 compiler set has been hiding in plain sight for DECADES. I know that it's so unlikely that we'd ever see any public release of a 64-bit version of Windows for the Alpha, but oddly enough the compiler, headers and libraries are all there. YES. You can make full executes for AXP64/Alpha64. Of course with no OS, so it's not like you can run them."
He continues: "Sadly as of today, there is no way to test. There is one surviving machine with Windows 2003 AXP64, outlined in an article by Raymond Chen. It's a great read about how Alpha64 NT port came to be. The machine is still sitting in Microsoft Archives. Hopefully one day someone can dig it out." The story could have ended there, but a follow up post appeared on Virtually Fun earlier this week - courtesy of guest contributor Antoni Sawicki (aka tenox) who has also experimented with the cross-compiler. He provided a little bit more historical context before making an interesting announcement: "The Win64 project for AXP64 and IA64 was code named "Sundown." Sadly, 64-bit Alpha AXP Windows was never released outside of Redmond."
"This was released by Microsoft to allow developers test-compile their programs to see if they are "64-bit ready," ahead of 64-bit hardware being available. However, this was just a cross-compiler and there was no actual way of running any of the binaries. Until Itanium finally came out, after infamously long delays." He mentions that a "generous reader, who contacted neozeed after his previous post, shared a disk image… containing a 64-bit build of Windows 2000 for Alpha AXP! The reader got it from a lot of random hard disks - bought from an e-waste (seller), years ago, and completely forgot about it until they saw the blog post!" Tenox and neozeed managed to get the test build running on an old PWS500 system via very roundabout methods.
Tenox reveals a couple of limitations: "Unfortunately there are no identifying marks that would definitely prove that this is a 64-bit Alpha AXP build. The only way to tell is because there is no WOW, even for AXP32. You can't run any 32-bit Alpha binaries. It will only run executables produced with the ALPHA64 compiler. This also means in practice, there is no native compiler for this. You have to cross compile on 32-bit NT4 or 2KRC. However if you (are) going to build anything for AXP64 I can run and test it for you. For sake of search engines the build number is 2210, the full string 2210.main.000302-1934."
He invites folks to witness the evidence in person: "If you want to see this live in action. We (are) going to be exhibiting at VCF West 2023 in August alongside other NT RISC machines. Come and see us!"
Sources:
Virtually Fun, Raymond Chen, The Register
He continues: "Sadly as of today, there is no way to test. There is one surviving machine with Windows 2003 AXP64, outlined in an article by Raymond Chen. It's a great read about how Alpha64 NT port came to be. The machine is still sitting in Microsoft Archives. Hopefully one day someone can dig it out." The story could have ended there, but a follow up post appeared on Virtually Fun earlier this week - courtesy of guest contributor Antoni Sawicki (aka tenox) who has also experimented with the cross-compiler. He provided a little bit more historical context before making an interesting announcement: "The Win64 project for AXP64 and IA64 was code named "Sundown." Sadly, 64-bit Alpha AXP Windows was never released outside of Redmond."
Tenox reveals a couple of limitations: "Unfortunately there are no identifying marks that would definitely prove that this is a 64-bit Alpha AXP build. The only way to tell is because there is no WOW, even for AXP32. You can't run any 32-bit Alpha binaries. It will only run executables produced with the ALPHA64 compiler. This also means in practice, there is no native compiler for this. You have to cross compile on 32-bit NT4 or 2KRC. However if you (are) going to build anything for AXP64 I can run and test it for you. For sake of search engines the build number is 2210, the full string 2210.main.000302-1934."
He invites folks to witness the evidence in person: "If you want to see this live in action. We (are) going to be exhibiting at VCF West 2023 in August alongside other NT RISC machines. Come and see us!"
28 Comments on First Test Build of Windows 2000 64-bit Rediscovered
2000 was okay after some updates.
W2000 was quite the stable OS in between 98 and XP out there.
Many people still used W2000 as it was robust and did'nt had the quircks both 98 or XP or even ME had.
Just not 64 bits...It was based on Windows NT - not 98.
this is before that, this is x64 itanium
I skipped ME and went straight to it from 98SE and was a clear upgrade in the experience.
Microsoft seemingly used it unofficially as a test bed for NT for consumers, as ME was pushed instead officially, but 2000 did come with consumer features such as DirectX.
I used it for a few years. Was a great system actually, though not everyone provided drivers for it. I didn't have that problem with my hw at the time.
NT4, 2000, XP are NT based.
None of these were truly their own thing, and ME especially reuses a lot of 98SE's systems because other than a driver repository upgrade it's mostly just 98.
Development of Alpha and IA-64 run parallel (MIPS as well) but don't intersect. Alpha's end coincided with Itanium's beginning simply because Compaq was won over by Intel's marketing. That worked out great for them...
ME was 98 third edition with a bunch of new hybrid 16/32 bit code that was an abomination to handle.
2000 was built on NT4You got one hell of a memory there. XP at launch was an unstable mess compared to 2000, and 98se could never hold a touch to NT based operating systems.
They got won over by corrupt intel with their shit itanic, just imagine if alpha had not been cancelled how far could it have gotten..., maybe it would've died later with x86-64 came out, as honestly alpha had no chance to survive in the consumer space.
Maybe it would've worked now for the enterprise space or a niche for the HPC systems, now that compiling is easier across platforms
EDIT: missed some posts
In the meantime, have the binaries from that build: archive.org/details/splash_20230516
W2K IMHO best Windows OS ever released. No bloat, just rock solid OS.
Build 2210 would place it in one of Whistler's early betas, wouldn't it? Whistler being the system which eventually released as Windows XP. At this stage none of the cosmetics had been added in, so it'd just look like and use Windows 2000 branding.
The finalized version of Windows 2000 is NT 5.0.2195, while Windows XP would achieve Gold status with build 5.1.2600.
Considering almost nobody can or will actually run it, I did make the binaries of the platform available.
Alpha64 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
It has no interesting midi/wav/bitmaps if anyone wonders, the logo is the same as the super early itanium versions with the spraypainted 64 over the 2000 logo.
SDL ported over, not so much outside of zip/unzip. It's very picky.
One interesting observation is that there is a WoW64 layer, but it's tied to the wx86 in house Microsoft x86 emulator! NTVDM from NT4 wont run, but Freecell from Win32s however DOES. The gui tools from SQL 4.21 will not run, but the SQL Server & CLI tools run fine.
Clearly they were far more interested in an i386 WoW64, than preserving an Alpha32 WoW. This also means it cannot run the compiler, requiring me to reboot, which takes ages.
I was thinking, are there no DEC Alpha emulators available? QEMU doesn't seem to support it. If this really requires real hardware, then it's no wonder it's fallen into that much obscurity. :oops: