Run Windows 2000 on a DEC Alpha with a new es40 fork • Hacker News Board

Re: Run Windows 2000 on a DEC Alpha with a new es40 fork

#81

Post by qubex » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 3:16 PM UTC

spyrja wrote: post #19

bartvk wrote: post #13

Somehow, Windows 2000 does not look dated to me. It looks functional and usable, and maybe even somewhat fresh. I never actually used it long-term (during college, started using Linux), so it can't be nostalgic. Anyone else feel the same?

It really wasn't a bad operating system. In fact it kind of blew its (lame) Win9X predecessors out of the water! I ran on Win2000 for years before finally switching to Linux. Of course Microsoft ended up going a different course with its newer "offerings" and I have nothing but pity for those who still have to use their products on a day-to-day basis.

Windows 9x and Me weren’t really the predecessors of Windows 2000; it’s real predecessor was Windows ant 4.0. They are very different lineages, with the former descending from 16 bit MS-DOS and Windows until version 3.11 and arguably being rooted in a copy of 1970s’ CP/M whereas the NT lineage was a clean implementation of a modern OS by David Cutler of VMS fame.

Re: Run Windows 2000 on a DEC Alpha with a new es40 fork

#82

Post by qubex » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 3:17 PM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #45

spyrja wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really wasn't a bad operating system. In fact it kind of blew its (lame) Win9X predecessors out of the water! I ran on Win2000 for years before finally switching to Linux. Of course Microsoft ended up going a different course with its newer "offerings" and I have nothing but pity for those who still have to use their products on a day-to-day basis.

I personally think the hypervisor architecture of 9x and its predecessors (starting at Windows/386) was far more interesting and innovative; while Win2k and the NT line are "traditional" OSes, 9x and 3.x are effectively VM hypervisors that have default hardware pass-through. DOS applications had dismal performance on NT, if they even ran at all.

Your comment reminds me (no insult intended) of the old adage that every doctor has a favourite disease.

Re: Run Windows 2000 on a DEC Alpha with a new es40 fork

#83

Post by qubex » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 3:21 PM UTC

This is personally mildly disturbing because I remember beta-testing Windows 2000 on DEC Alpha back in late 1999, and eventually running Windows 2000 and BeOS on a dual PIII-450 machine (with 256 MB of RAM, SCSI HDs, and eventually an ATI Rage Fury graphics card… amazing back then and archaic nowadays).

Re: Run Windows 2000 on a DEC Alpha with a new es40 fork

#84

Post by baron3dl » Wed, Jul 08, 2026, 12:39 AM UTC

mikewarot wrote: post #62

xenophonf wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I forget that what I miss was not the system, but the community on the system. Same. I had VMS running on an AS200 next to a beautiful X terminal, just like the computer lab at school. But my dad wasn't sitting next to me, hunting and pecking away at his old C.Itoh terminal. None of the usual suspects were across the table, locked into their favorite MUDD. And so on. I miss them all so much.

Whenever the nostalgia kicks in hard, I fire up OpenVMS 7.2 on the virtual 11/780 in my cheap Motorola phone, then SSH in. I love OpenSimH and Termux.

Cluster that sucker. I got a pair of MicroVAX 3900s in a VMScluster, actually using the same disk image, just like they'd use the same physical disk in the old days. ALLOCLASS, bb.

Somewhere, the OpenSimH docs say it'll corrupt the image, so ymmv.