Quake in FLASH!

Sure we’ve seen iD’s Doom in flash, but what about something more intense, say, Quake?

Quake in flash (actionscript)

Try it out here, The only requirement is that you have a flash 10 plugin, which supports the Alchemy VM. Source code is available here as well.

Sadly there is no networking play, perhaps it’s a limitation that you need a socket server to allow inbound connections from flash..? Maybe if I can get Alchemy to build anything under x86_64 maybe I’ll play with it… But no promises.

There is a new Dec Alpha emulator out there…

EmuVM‘s AlphaVM!

Currently it emulates an AlphaServer DS20, with up to 4 disks, a CD-ROM, two serial consoles and pcap’d ethernet.

AlphaVM

The UI is pretty self explanatory, however I was unable to boot either OpenBSD, nor Digital UNIX 4.0b (no wonder they support .e onward…) on it. I suspect it’s mainly targeted to VMS users as the Itanium is inching towards a silent death.

The requirements for this version are;

  • The emulator runs on x86 or x64 architecture. The appropriate build is chosen by the product installer. We recommend an x64 system. On x86 the performance is lower. Some features are supported only in x64 (for instance SMP trial ). These limitations arise due to the fact that Alpha AXP is itself a 64-bit system.

 

  • On x64 host system the CPU must support the instruction CMPXCHG16B. Note, that this instruction is not supported by older AMD CPUs, which are rare.

 

 

  • There must be at least two cores. There must be at least 3 cores for the SMP trial.
  • We recommend at least 2GB memory.
  • OS is Windows7, or later. The product may run on Vista x64, but it has not been tested there yet. The product will definitely not run on earlier versions.
  • The installer installs .NET framework client profile. The .NET framework is not included in the installation package of AlphaVM, but rather the downloader is included. You can download and install the framework prior to the product installation. The framework is used for the launcher GUI implementation.
  • The ‘tested’ installed OS’s are…
  • OpenVMS (starting from 7.1-2)
  • DigitalUNIX/Tru64 (starting from 4.0e)
  • Linux (tested with Debian Linux 5.0.6)

 

Windows NT July 1992 Preview

So I got my hands on another early Windows NT preview. This one is so rough around the edges, it’s more of an alpha then a beta. It’s even reflected in the bootup screen.

Bootup Bluescreen

Well, what has changed from the 1991 releases? Plenty, the registry is coming along quite a bit, but there is no integrated setup program at this point. I almost wonder if this build was meant to be internal only, as it does drop stuff about your Microsoft badge ID. No, really!

Freaky, isn’t it?

Winver showing Build 297

In this build 297, and it includes the OS/2 & MS-DOS/WOW subsystems. The POSIX subsystem is absent, further cementing the idea that it was included much later to target Windows NT at government contracts with a POSIX check-box. I’ve only done some simple testing with the MS-DOS compatibility and it was ‘ok’ but nothing too solid. I didn’t have any luck with the OS/2 stuff, maybe I’m just doing it wrong. One thing is for sure, if it’s this rickety in 1992, they were nowhere near ready in 1991!

I guess if you paid for it, you can put your name all over it!

Another fun touch is who it’s registered to. I guess since Bill is footing the bill for NT, it’s all his anyways.

Broken boot.

With that being said, the installation which involves a batch script dos2nt.bat is very touchy, it does require few files to manually edit. I’ve found it works best with a d drive to swap to, but for the most part NT cann’t find itself properly and you wind up with a blank desktop, stemming from the “An error has occurred in the registry. The Program Manager’s settings and groups can not be accessed.” error. Since NT at this point is far more closer to Windows 3.1, then 1991’s builds being closer to Windows 3.0, the famed game reversi is missing…

However the administrative tools is in NT now, the logon/logoff and locking works. NT at this point is transitioning from an OS running a 32bit version of Windows 3.0 into a fleshed out operating system.

Shutting down.