Author Archives: tenox

Windows Server 2008 IA64 guest on HP Integrity VM (HP-UX)

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This is a guest post by Antoni Sawicki (aka Tenox)

This is a guide on how to install Windows Server 2008 guest on HP Integrity VM. Yes, Itanium and HP-UX involved. Unlike installing HP-UX or OpenVMS guests, this is not widely documented (or at all) and a rather obscure process. I suppose Windows on HP-UX was never popular in first place and only maybe saw some use in the enterprise.

Lets say you have a HP Integrity servers like rx1600, rx2600 or higher. You have HP-UX 11.31 installed on it and want to setup a Windows guest VM just for fun…

Firstly, if you have already installed Integrity VM from a recent Apps DVD, you will likely have 6.x version. This absolutely does not support Windows. You will need to downgrade to 4.x. To do that start by removing the packages. You will need to uninstall the main HP VM package, as well as several others: Guest/Host AVIO, VMGuest*, VMKernel and VMProvider. You will also need to delete folders /opt/hpvm and /var/opt/hpvm. Otherwise you will run in to remains of some 6.x configs and databases that are unreadable to the older version.

Then you will need to install earlier version, for example 4.2.5, which is the last version that officially supports Windows guests. However HP VM 4.3 also works pretty well and has an added benefit of a “Virtual iLO” (but don’t get your hopes for a graphical console. Virtual iLO or not, all you get is a serial console to the guest. ViLO only really provides telnet access to hpvmconsole) You can download earlier HP VM versions from here. The install is pretty straight forward, just unpack the tarball and point swinstall -s /path \* at it. I did encounter a small issue with 4.3 HPVM_1105. You need to create swlock file inside catalog directory of the extracted package to get past a lock error. Reboot and run this to verify:

hpvminfo
hpvmstatus

If all good, the next step is to create a virtual switch and boot it up:

hpvmnet -c -S switch1 -n 0
hpvmnet -S switch1 -b
hpvmnet -v

In this case -n 0 indicates lan0 interface from ifconfig.

Then you create a blank disk image, like so:

hpvmdevmgmt -A -S 20G /vm/windows.fd

Finally you create a VM and attach all the goodies:

hpvmcreate -P win64 -O windows -c 1 -r 2048
hpvmmodify -P win64 -a disk:scsi::file:/vm/windows.fd
hpvmmodify -P win64 -a dvd:scsi::file:/vm/w2k8.iso
hpvmmodify -P win64 -a network:lan::vswitch:switch1
hpvmmodify -P win64 -K x.x.x.x -L 255.255.255.0

The last bit with -K and -L is virtual iLO, only available in 4.3 and above. If using earlier version skip that part. The IP address can be on the same segment as vswitch / lan0.

Before you boot it up, I will remind you again that THERE IS NO GRAPHICAL CONSOLE. You can’t boot to the setup and click through the options. HP offers 3 types of text only mode installation:

Option A.
Using something called HP Smart Setup Media from HP Integrity Essentials Foundation Pack for Windows. I miraculously found it on HP Support Website and archived here. Insert this .iso image instead of w2k8.iso above:

hpvmmodify -P win64 -a dvd:scsi::file:/vm/smartcd.iso

If you ever need to remove it, the command is:

hpvmdevmgmt -d gdev:/path/file.iso

Then boot it up:

hpvmstart -P win64
hpvmconsole -P win64
CO

If you have virtual iLO you can also telnet to the IP address configured earlier with -K.

In the EFI console you open shell, then navigate to fs0: and efi\boot folder then launch bootia64.efi file.

You will be presented with this lovely screen:

Pick Express Setup:

After few screens you will be see this:

You will be asked to swap the cdrom in to a Windows 2008 IA64 Install CD:

hpvmmodify -P win64 -m dvd:scsi:0,0,1:file:/vm/w2k8.iso

Once it loads up, you need to type some magic spells. Wait till you see a message that says “The CMD command is now available”, type cmd, enter, then press ESC+TAB to switch to it. Then navigate to drive C: and run install. This is the information screen for reference:

The install process takes quite a while. Fortunately you can play SimCity on HP-UX IA64 while you wait!

Eventually the VM will reboot and auto load to SAC prompt again. Repeat the process where you see cmd is available, launch it then switch using ESC+TAB. You will be able to login to Windows IA64 Guest VM!

Hurray we have Windows IA64 VM Running!

All you have to do is run ipconfig to get the IP address and RDP to it:

Windows 2008 IA64 VM running on HP Integrity VM on HP-UX 11.31

Option B
Using Windows RTM media + unattend.xml file. The HP VM admin guide provides a sample unattend.xml file in an appendix. I have extracted and archived it here.

This is the original instruction:

The above is complete bullshit as you need an existing VM to perform this. Starting from scratch this is no go. I have opted out to just adding the unattend.xml to the original iso image using PowerISO. Simple and easy.

The rest of the procedure is quite similar to option A.

hpvmstart -P win64
hpvmconsole -P win64
CO

If you have virtual iLO you can also telnet to the IP address configured earlier with -K.

In the EFI console you open shell, then navigate to fs0: and efi\boot folder then launch bootia64.efi file.

Then at some point you will get to the SAC prompt where you will have to type cmd then press ESC+TAB to switch to it. Then in cmd.exe prompt you launch setup /unattend:d:\unattend.xml. and wait for it to do it’s job.

Once the system reboots, you will have to do the cmd esc+tab thing again, but this time you will get a login prompt. Login as administrator with the password from unattend.xml.

You will need to enable remote desktop:

reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server" /v fDenyTSConnections /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

and allow it through the firewall:

netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group="remote desktop" new enable=yes

The Smart Setup CD does this automatically.

Option C
PXE+RIS etc. Which is not covered here.

Post Install Steps

You basically get the IP address either from your DHCP server or by running ipconfig in cmd.exe. Then RDP to the VM. Login in as administrator with password you set either in unattend.xml or EFI install tool.

The Smart Setup CD has some drivers and components that can be installed on a VM.

What can you run on this?

Not much. From the “big apps” there’s MS SQL server, SAP and whatnot. 7zip and bunch of utilities from Sysinternals to C-Kermit. You can port more apps by installing Platform SDK and Visual Studio Tools. The latest known is Windows 7.1 SDK for IA64. It requires .NET 4.x to be installed. All archived here.

From lesser known items there’s Services For Unix, aka Interix, which has a cc wrapper around cl.exe and can be used to port more software:

Services For Unix on Windows 2008 VM on a HP-UX 11.31 IA64 host.

Have Fun with Virtualization!

A modern re-implementation of RCPD (Remote Copy Daemon)

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(This is a guest post by Antoni Sawicki aka tenox)

TL;DR
RCPD plays nicely with NAT, re-implemented as a stand alone daemon, from scratch, without ined, r-daemons. Fully open, no security or authentication. Docker friendly.

I often find myself needing to copy a file or two, in or out of an emulated system with some weird networking setup like qemu net user, SLiRP, NAT, etc. Or from/to a physical machine, but having server running in a Docker container, sometimes on a Mac, which has even weirder network contraptions.

Most of the old file transfer protocols like FTP have tendency to open a reverse connection from the server back to the client, which doesn’t play very well with NAT. Even TFTP (who would have thought!) requires nf_conntrack, STUN, proxies, connection helpers, punching holes, UPnP and other nonsense. While they can be individually worked out, it’s rather not universal. Vintage OS SSH/SCP is either non existent or ciphers are too old to play well with modern SSH server. NFS is mostly OK but it has it’s own quirks and you can’t run it in a Docker container. I seen people doing shit like this. I’m also guilty of using Kermit to transfer files over network from time to time. Overall quite frustrating situation.

It turns out that the rcp protocol is very easy on NAT, as it uses just a single, outgoing TCP connection. Not only it worked in all my use cases, but also Berkeley r-commands are ubiquitous on pretty much all vintage OSes that I work with. From Unix, VMS to Windows NT. There are ports to OS/2, DOS and everything else. A recent practical example was how Neozeed and I copied a VBScript in to Windows 2000 64bit install.

The server side however is somewhat of a challenge. It has been obsolete for quite some time now. For starters, R-daemons require inetd, which is mostly not a thing on modern Unix. Then there are actual rshd/rexec/rlogin/rcpd daemons. I spent several hours trying to hack netkit-rsh and rsh-redone to play nicely in Docker, without good results. Even if it could be done, there still are /etc/hosts.equiv, ~/.rhosts and other bullshit “security” contraptions to deal with.

Annoyed with all this nonsense decided to write RCPD from scratch. Docker friendly, fully open, no security or authentication of any kind. I also didn’t want remote shell (rsh/rlogin/rexec), just the file copy part. The original rcpd was using rshd under the hood. This is now completely eliminated and the shell stuff is synthetically generated to satisfy the protocol.

Now if I want to copy a file in to a vintage system I can simply do this:

That’s it. It just works™ with net user and Docker on a Mac vmnet.

The best part that the whole thing has been written and debugged entirely by Claude!

Available from https://github.com/tenox7/rcpd

VNCFOX – Better way of browsing modern web on vintage machines

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(this is a guest post by Antoni Sawicki aka tenox)

TL;DR
Firefox with TightVNC server in a Docker container.
https://github.com/tenox7/vncfox

I often work on vintage Unix Workstations and other obsolete systems. I have a need to browse modern web on old computers somehow. In the past I developed Web Rendering Proxy to help with this. While WRP is awesome as a showcase, and some light browsing, unfortunately it falls little short of being practical for a daily driver.

Like many others I have been cheating and using a VM with a web browser and remotely connecting to it via VNC or RDP. This is rather obvious and mostly works, but a VM is hard to run and upkeep. Takes time to boot and eats resources. You need to customize it, install updates and other nonsense. I wanted something much simpler, leaner and not requiring any maintenance. I also need to run it on ARM based hosts like a Mac or Raspberry PI.

Enter VNCFOX – a Firefox browser with TightVNC server packaged as a Docker container. It’s small, lean, easy to run and there is no boot time and lengthy updates. You can mount Firefox .mozilla profile in a Docker volume to preserve your settings, plugins like uBlock, history, cookies and cache, across container restarts! I also typically bind mount a folder exported over NFS in to /home/vncfox/Downloads.

VNCFOX on HP-UX 9

TightVNC version of VNC is rather crucial, especially for older computers. Without the “Tight” protocol, VNC screen refresh consumes a lot of CPU on the client side and the session is laggy. TightVNC works incredibly smooth. For ease of use I have compiled clients for some older operating systems.

Overall this approach works really well, including stuff like Perplexity/ChatGPT/Claude, Google Docs, Email, even Discord and other web based chat clients. I regularly now post and edit this very blog from a HP-UX workstation!

VNCFOX on IRIX 5.3

The container is dual platform for both AMD64 and ARM64. It can be run even on Mac host with Apple Silicon. Raspberry PI maybe?

Is it future proof? Maybe. Apparently Wayland supports VNC, including Tight protocol. Some day I will migrate the server. But for now x11 vncserver works pretty well.

Useful keyboard shortcuts:

  • F8 – TightVNC Menu – Including clipboard transfer etc
  • F11 – Firefox Full Screen Mode

More info and customization, including dealing with retarded scrollbars:
https://github.com/tenox7/vncfox

DUX SimCity UNIX aka Micropolis on IRIX 6.5, AIX 4.3, 5.1, HP-UX 11.31

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(This is a guest post by Antoni Sawicki aka Tenox)

Previously I managed to crack and unlock the demo version of DUX SimCity for UNIX. It worked just fine on the original pre-built platforms, DEC Unix, HPUX, SunOS and IRIX. Unfortunately the IRIX binary is for 5.3 in COFF format and doesn’t work on more modern ELF based IRIX like 6.2 and above. More importantly however, there never has been a release for IBM AIX! Inability to play SimCity on RS/6000 is excruciating. Not to mention several other Unix systems of that time.

SimCity for UNIX Exhibit on VCF West 2024

A few days ago I ran a VCF West 2024 exhibit showcasing this important piece of software history. I got to chat with many people about these shortcomings and decided to see if something can be done about it.

On the right of the picture above, you can see a OLPC XO. This laptop plays an important role of SimCity history. During conception of OLPC, the game has been open sourced under a new name “Micropolis”. This was insanely fantastic endeavor, kudos for everyone involved. Unfortunately the software has been “enhanced” to run on XO Sugar GUI thing, ported to C++ Python and otherwise defaced in several different ways.

Fortunately there survives a very early source code of Micropolis, aka old gen. While GPL and under a new name, has only minor, cosmetic changes compared to the original source code. With some minor tweaking and working around funnies with xlC and MIPSpro compilers, I was able to build old-gen Micropolis for AIX 4.3, 5.1, IRIX 6.5 and HP-UX 11.31 on IA64.

Most importantly however, in the process, I discovered that the original DUX SimCity assets, including TCL/TK GUI cruft was directly usable with just a few small changes in sim.c. Effectively undoing all the changes mentioned in DONE and making it almost the original, except for name. A hybrid GPL Micropolis – DUX SimCity Demo Asset build has been born!

SimCity on AIX 4.3
SimCity on IRIX 6.5

You can download it from here: https://github.com/tenox7/micropolis

WRP 4.8.0 – Simple HTML Mode with Image Support!

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(this is a guest post by Antoni Sawicki aka Tenox)

Previously I wrote a boring lengthy article about need for “simple html mode” in WRP. Today I want to introduce addition of images to this contraption! You can now browse modern web like it was in 1994!

The say that image is better than 1000 words, so here we go:

WRP 4.8.0 via Netscape 4.8 on SGI IRIX
WRP 4.8.0 via Mosaic 2.7 on HPUX 9.07

You can regulate the image size and make them however big you want, also PNG, GIF and JPEG of course:

WRP 4.8.0 on HPUX 9.07
WRP 4.8.0 via Netscape 1.0 on SunOS 4.1.4 on QEMU

The simple html mode is still quite buggy and needs a lot of fixes. I see some 400 errors here and there, Captha problems, etc. I think these can be all fixed in time.

You can download latest WRP from Github!

Please report bugs and issues!

Installing older version of QEMU on MacOS using Homebrew

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(this is a guest post by Antoni Sawicki aka Tenox)

I often need to install a specific / older version of QEMU on a Mac using Homebrew. If you search for how to do it, typical answers are create a local tap, extract some files and other nonsense. Building from sources is equally retarded because configure can’t easily find includes and libraries installed by Homebrew.

This is how to do it in a simplest possible way. Find QEMU Homebrew Formula file on Github. Then click history on the top right corner. Browse for the desired version. Then on the right of the version, click a little icon saying “View code at this point”. It should show you an older version of the same formula. You can click download raw file or copy the URL and use curl to fetch it. Then simply run brew install ~/Downloads/qemu.rb or wherever you saved it. Magic! Hope it helps!

WRP – Simple HTML / Reader Mode

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(this is a guest post by Antoni Sawicki aka Tenox)

TL;DR
WRP now allows rendering web pages in to a simplified HTML, compatible with old browsers (in addition to Image Map).

Netscape 4.x on IRIX 5.3 using WRP 4.7

Long version
WRP or “Web Rendering Proxy” is a proxy server that allows to use vintage web browsers on the modern web. Originally inspired by Opera Mini/Turbo rendering proxy for mobile devices. I wanted a similar service that would translate modern web pages, but in to it’s older HTML version. This not only proved very difficult, but I realized that the web is advancing in a way that it would not be very future proof. I’m talking about dynamic pages, JavaScript generated content and WASM. Instead, I took a different approach – generating a screenshot of a page with clickable Image Map. This allows to faithfully represent a fully rendered web page on a vintage machine + allow to click anywhere on it and perform actions. At a cost of performance. Rendering GIF or JPEG and transferring over network feels rather slow and clunky.

I have been using WRP for some 10 years now. I began to realize that, this approach, while pretty awesome for show and bragging, is not very practical for day to day use. In fact, my use of web browsers on vintage workstations typically revolves around reading documentation, blogs, wikis and other, “mostly text” websites. It would be much better if these were not clunky screenshots but rather some form of text output.

I again started poking around the original idea of simplified HTML. Looked at various reader modes, print to PDF, etc. In particular, I have noticed recent advancements in so called “web scraping”, extraction and html to markdown conversion services. Likely fueled by the recent AI/LLM craze, as robots scrape the web to learn about humans. What caught my attention are various “html to markdown” services. They can fully render dynamic JS pages and extract contents as it was in a browser. Also, Markdown, if you think about it, is in fact a simplified HTML.

After doing some research, in couple of evenings and less that 100 lines of code I got a basic version going. The principle is as follows: First capture the page HTML, convert to Markdown, do some manipulation like adding link prefixes and remove images (we’ll come back to that later). Then render Markdown back to HTML. Wrap it in a vintage HTML header an off we go. The results are amazing!!

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is w2-1024x819.png

For the “mostly text” pages this is way better than screenshot mode. Not only is way faster and more responsive, you can select and copy text, but also you use the old web browser more like it was originally intended. At any time, if you want to view the screenshot mode, you can simply switch back to PNG/GIF/JPG mode with couple of clicks.

Another interesting aspect of this is extensibility and potential for improvement. For the screenshot mode there just isn’t that much stuff you could add. It’s just a screenshot. For Markdown and simple HTML there’s a million things one could add. Both down and up converters offer a wide variety of plugins and filters. We can improve formatting, layout, processing, add translation and other features. Perhaps also different features based on client browser version. Maybe even input forms and …images.

Lets talk about images. Right now they are completely deleted from markdown. This is for several reasons, compatibility, performance, load time, size, formatting, etc. I’m thinking that perhaps images could be added in some converted form. For example downsized to a small JPG or maybe converted in to ASCII art. Suggestions more than welcome!

Netscape 3.x on OpenVMS 8.x using WRP 4.7 looking at VSI VMS Documentation!

Download from here: https://github.com/tenox7/wrp/releases/tag/4.7.0

To switch to Reader / Simple HTML mode simply change image type to “TXT”. This can also be done using -t txt flag.

Happy browsing!

SINIX-Z 5.42 on 86Box

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(this is a guest post by Antoni Sawicki aka Tenox)

As part of nerdy new year celebrations I got Fujitsu Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme SINIX-Z running on 86Box. This was possible thanks to Plamen and Vlad!.

SINIX-Z 5.42 on 86Box

Update: got X11 going:

Mosaic browser on Sinix 5.42 on 86Box

Also C compiler:

Also networking… apparently you have to manually connect it.

Here is a pre-installed image and 86Box configuration file. Now includes bash, gcc and gzip. These are also downloadable here.

SoftWindows on OpenVMS

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(This is a guest post by Antoni Sawicki aka Tenox)

I like exploring vintage hypervisors and emulators. In the past I did a whole series on Merge, VP/IX and others. This time I wanted to take look at something a little more exotic – SoftWindows on Alpha OpenVMS. I have in fact installed it a while back but I could never get it properly licensed. I looked everywhere, asked everyone and of course no one had a license pack for this. Fortunately there are two license generators for OpenVMS, pakgen and lmfgen. But how do you find out what is the exact product code and vendor? VMS provides a license debug facility:

$ reply/enable=license
$ define/sys/exec lmf$display_opcom_message true

Then, when starting an app, you will get an opcom log message with all the required product name, vendor, etc. The rest is easy. For the lazy, here is a complete license pack for SoftWindows:

$ LICENSE REGISTER SOFTPC -
        /ISSUER=DEC -
        /PRODUCER=DEC -
        /UNITS=0 -
        /OPTIONS=(MOD_UNITS,ALPHA) -
        /CHECKSUM=2-GNHM-DAFO-CPGG-AICI
$ LICENSE LOAD SOFTPC

Here is a screenshot for your viewing pleasure!

SoftWindows on OpenVMS Alpha

The install comes with it’s own version of Windows 3.1 plus some additional tools and apps, typical for Insignia products. You can map drives to folders, ports COM and LPT, etc. There are a variety of video modes – Hercules, CGA, EGA and VGA, even 256 colors. The performance is quite decent, however the CPU is pegged at 100%, as you can see in the system monitor. There is a CPU idle detection tool, however it doesn’t seem to work very well. I suspect that perhaps this may be to do with much never OpenVMS version, than the software has been designed for. The SoftWindows has been released in 1994 and not been updated since.

How do you install and run this thing? There is a full installation guide, however since this is just a PCSI file, you can simply use product install:

$ unzip softwin-v0100.zip
$ product install *

To start it you cast these magic spells:

$ @sys$sysroot:[sysmgr]softwin$startup.com
$ softwin

Since SoftWindows is essentially SoftPC you can run pure DOS mode. I will do a follow up on this and explore some DOS games.

You can find all the files on osarchive.org.

From a hindsight, it’s ironic how roles have reversed in 30 years. Back then MS-DOS / Windows was a toy OS, running on a toy “personal” computer, emulated in a little window on a “real” computer like DEC Alpha. In modern times you run OpenVMS as a guest VM on a Windows PC.

Have fun with virtualization!

Windows NT 3.1 on DEC Alpha AXP

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(this is a guest post by Antoni Sawicki aka Tenox)

As I was preparing the Windows NT RISC exhibit for VCF west, I realized that I’m missing a rather important piece of the history. While I will be showing the potentially last DEC Alpha Windows build ever – AXP64 2210, I don’t have anything earlier than NT 3.51. It would be nice to showcase the very first RTM version – NT 3.1. From time perspective, NT did not get popular until the version 3.5 and later. Windows NT 3.1 would be considered rare even on a 386, let alone on a RISC CPU! So what RISC hardware does Windows NT 3.1 run on?

NT 3.1 RISC HCL

Not many! The HCL published on gunkies has a few more systems, but nothing that I have. The early MIPS based systems are all but unobtanium as of today. This is probably a good time to mention a little known port of Windows NT 3.1 to the DECstation 5000. However these builds are not found even on earliest NT betas. Not to mention lack of ARC firmware for this machine.

The Alphas were looking a little more reachable. The DEC 2000 Model 300 and DECpc AXP 150 are one and the same machine, packaged in a server and workstation cases. Code-named Jensen, DEC designed and marketed these specifically around Windows NT. Unlike prior Alphas, this model used a lot of “PC” components for increased compatibility and lower cost. Eventually paved way for the more well known DEC Multia. The Jensen has been seen floating here and there and many people have these.

I was able to get a loaner from Chris Satterfield aka Compgeke for the VCF. Having a working specimen at hand, I started looking at part numbers of various components. In an amazing streak of luck, in practically zero time I was able to find, buy and assemble a complete DECpc AXP 150 from spare parts on eBay! Without a case, but nevertheless. Also big thanks to Christopher Rivett for help with some fine details!

Franken Jensen built from spare parts off eBay.
Jensen running at VCF West 2023, with fans installed

BOM

  • Motherboard + CPU – DEC 70-29685-01
  • GPU – DEC/Compaq Qvision 1024/E (1024×768) – 126654-001
  • GPU – (Optional) Number 9 High Res (1280×1024) – 30-41800-01
  • HBA – Adaptec AHA-1742A EISA – 467806-00
  • NIC – DEC DE422-S EISA – 5021102-01
  • RAM – 4x 16MB, FPM, 60ns, 72-Pin, 12-Chip, True Parity SIMM
  • PSU – DEC/HP 30-37197-02, however a standard AT PSU may be OK

If you going to build one yourself, beware of overheating. Jensen runs rather hot and needs good cooling. Not only for the CPU. There is a section of the motherboard just under the EISA cards that runs incredibly hot. See the picture, where I have installed a large Noctua fan.

OS Install

There are many Windows NT 3.1 CDROMs floating around. I purchased a DEC branded, shrink-wrapped CD on eBay to use as a prop along with the machine. You can download the iso image here.

Installation of Windows NT 3.1 on DECpc AXP 150 is pretty straightforward and not that much different from the later versions. However as a prerequisite you will need the ECU floppy disk to configure the EISA slot assignments, card and jumper settings. After that you will have to go through various setup screens in ARC BIOS to configure system settings. Then you run arcinst to create a system partition and setupldr to install the OS. The rest of it is pretty uneventful. This is somewhat expected, as this was pretty much the only one and supported hardware combination, so must have been well tested. The only curious part is that the NT OS Kernel does not display any text during normal boot. Later versions of NT will display the build number and MP or UP kernel variant and dots indicating subsystem load progress. This is rather odd because I expected more text mode stuff from older NT version, but who knows.

Jensen NT 3.1 Boot Menu
Windows NT 3.1 on DEC Alpha AXP, DECpc 150 aka Jensen

Service Pack Saga

If you are even vaguely familiar with installing Windows NT at all, you will know that the very first thing you have to perform after installation, is to apply a service pack. NT 3.1 did have service packs, up to SP3. The problem is that, as you may very well expect, non-x86 editions were nowhere to be found in 2023. The only thing I could come up with was http://www.win31.de/ent31.htm, which had a German AXP and MIPS SP3, but no English! [It since has been updated…]. I had to do some real detective work to track down an US-English AXP SP3 version. I spent a few days going through various random CDs and ftp site mirrors of that era, with little luck. Eventually I stumbled on this README file, stating:

Due to space constraints on the Windows NT Service Packs for
International Versions CD, the USA Service Pack version 3 is located on
the Additional Windows NT Service Packs, Windows 3.11 versions, SDKs,
and DDKs CD in the NTSRVPC3\USA directory.

Bingo! After a few hits and missed I spotted this particular CDROM here: https://archive.org/details/microsoft-developer-network-january-1995-disc-4-of-15 – Now the OS is finally “servicepacked” 🙂

Applications!

My general impression of NT 3.1 on DEC Alpha is pretty awesome. If you can overlook the age and some obvious shortcomings, the OS is pretty stable, solid and even snappy for such old hardware. An OS itself without apps is not much. While overall Alpha NT application outlook is pretty scanty I was able to find a several very interesting gems!

Most importantly, thanks to Chris, a DEC Windows NT Developers CD-ROM!

The disk has an incredible amount of demo, freeware, public domain and shareware applications as well as DEC marketing material.

Windows NT Developers CD for DEC Alpha NT 3.1

You can get a lot of DEC proprietary software like C++, Fortran, PATHWORKS, DECtalk, as well as X servers, etc.

However I was particularly interested in some 3rd party commercial apps.

For example there is an early version of DMC Calamus Desktop Publishing.

DMC Calamus desktop publishing on Windows NT 3.1 DEC Alpha AXP

Also a demo version of a vintage, text-mode SlickEdit, way before it was replaced by the Visual SlickEdit known today.

SlickEdit 2.3 on Windows NT 3.1 DEC Alpha AXP

There also is WinDev editior, which is quite superior to Notepad and has some code editing goodies and shortcuts to SDK tools, making it something of a simple IDE.

WinDev 1.56 on Windows NT 3.1 DEC Alpha AXP

Another big source is Windows NT Application Sampler CDROM, (also from Smithsonian).

One of the coolest thing found there is a graphical text editor called WinEdit. It has a ton of features and even syntax highlighting! It has since became my default to go editor / IDE on this system!

WinEdit 3.0E on Windows NT 3.1 DEC Alpha AXP

There of course is a Windows NT SDK with the M (MEP) editor.

Windows NT 3.1 SDK with M / MEP Editor on DEC Alpha AXP

There also are quite few public domain apps and games, ports of GNU software, Micro Emacs, Kermit, etc.

Update: CICA NT Shareware Collection has some interesting apps under the /alpha directory.

High Resolution GPU

One of things that was troubling me for some time was rather low resolution of the default QVision graphics card. The maximum being only 1024×768 is just not acceptable. Talking to several Jensen’s owners, no one even heard about anything better. However looking at the Windows setup options, I curiously noticed that the system does support one 1280×1024 video card – Number 9 GXE.

I simply assumed that such card would simply be unobtanium in 2023. However, digging through some old catalogs and spare part listings, I managed to find a DEC part number, which is 30-41800-01. Armed with this, I was able to find it via DEC spare part reseller that I often use. They had it in stock listed as “HIGH RES EISA 1280 x 1024 GRAPHICS”. The price wasn’t too bad either, at least compared to the whole endeavor. A few days later I received this:

After installation of the S3 driver (must be the Service Pack 3 version!) I was finally able to get 1280×1024 from the poor thing!

With this I should have a more cozy environment to compile and port even more apps 🙂

In future I want to try the Advanced Server edition as well as some early Betas with Alpha support.