GoKawiilPublished: 05-07-2026 20:33 | Author: Remy van Elst | Text only version of this article
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.
Here is a screenshot of Windows 2000 in es40 :
Here is OpenVMS running noticeably faster with JIT enabled:
There is also OpenVMS graphics support, no need for X11 tunneling anymore:
To get to a graphical login, start up OpenVMS, log in on the Operator Console and start the graphical system:
@SYS$MANAGER:DECW$STARTUP
Then type logout to get out of the operator console and get the login window:
This will not be a setup guide, I just wanted to inform you of the new fork and the great progress that has been made. I've been trying out the build with massive speedups due to the JIT compiler and it feels way faster than without JIT support, both Windows NT and OpenVMS.
There is a full guide on getting Windows 2000 up and running here, as well as instructions for Tru64 Unix.
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