Improved DEC Alpha emulator runs Windows 2000 for Alpha and OpenVMS and Tru64 with X11

Colour me positively surprised, as I had no idea Alpha emulation had progressed this much.

As you might know, I'm involved a bit in the OpenVMS community and the Alpha emulation side via AXPBox. AXPBox (github) is a fork of the es40 alpha emulator by Camiel Vanderhoeven (who is now Chief Architect at VSI, the company that makes OpenVMS, for x86 nowdays). There have been many forks of es40 in the past and recently a new one has popped up with some great new features. Like speedups via a JIT compiler, S3 graphics port from MAME and ARC support, resulting in the ability to run Windows 2000 for the DEC Alpha.

Remy van Elst

Not only can you run the unreleased Alpha version of Windows 2000 on this forked emulator, it's also capable of running OpenVMS and Tru64 UNIX. In fact, both OpenVMS and Tru64 can run their full X11 CDE desktops on the emulator as well, which is incredibly cool and a huge milestone. As the name of the original emulator implies, it's emulating an AlphaServer Es40 from the turn of the century, which should be fast enough for enthusiast use.

The last AlphaStation ever made, the ES47, is still very high on my list of computers I desperately want but will never have - they are incredibly rare, and whenever they do come up for sale, incredibly expensive. If you have one, consider yourself lucky, and please, write about it! Tell the world!