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!"