After our post a few days ago about running Windows NT for MIPS with Qemu, I was once again reminded of just how much fun it would be to own a MIPS, Alpha, or PowerPC machine from the mid-’90s that can run Windows NT 4. However, after some trouble finding a hardware compatibility list, I decided to ask Twitter – Steven Sinofsky suggested looking through the .iso files of these exotic releases for this information, but I couldn’t find anything in the official documentation contained on the Windows NT 4 for MIPS .iso.
Luckily, however, Angus Fox, who worked at Lotus at the time, clearly remembered that there was a very clear, fully detailed HCL on the Windows NT 3.51 for Alpha disc, and it turns out he was right – the HCL comes on the disc as a .hlp file, which is a help file readable by older versions of the Windows help viewer. The Windows NT 4 .iso, too, contained an updated version of this HCL, detailing all the hardware, workstations, and servers supported by the MIPS, Alpha, and PowerPC (and x86) versions of Windows NT 4.
As he details on his website, it takes some work to read the .hlp file on Windows, but on my Linux machine, it was as easy as double-clicking the file – Wine’s own Windows help viewer loaded up the file without any issue. So, there you have it – if, like me, you are somehow interested in running these obscure version of Windows NT on real Alpha, MIPS, or PowerPC hardware, all the information you need is right on the disc.
Sadly, a bigger problem to overcome is finding and buying the hardware in question. Like any other non-x86 hardware from the past 30 years (DEC, HP, SGI, Sun, etc.), it has become prohibitively expensive to buy, and pretty much only available in the US using eBay, adding hundreds to thousands of euros of shipping costs to the final price for us Europeans. I’m not entirely sure what is causing this massive surge in pricing, since rarity alone cannot possibly account for charging, for instance, over 6000 dollars (!) for an AlphaStation 255.
The HCL was a booklet included in each box of NT 3.x. By NT 4.0, hardware was standardized enough that it didn’t matter so much; the early releases were much more picky about what they needed. It looks like both 3.51 and 4.0 include a HLP file in the ISO, and 4.0 didn’t include the booklet.
Each NT 3.x/4.0 CD has all of the architectures supported by that release, so any random boxed copy from eBay has everything needed. Note though that 3.51 is the first release supporting PowerPC but includes printed materials for 3.5, so the information on the CD is more current/accurate.
Alphastations on ebay for $6k+ haha ouch. I do recall like minded friends and I looked up Alpha mobos as an option (late 90s) and it was not completely ridiculous in price but we still didn’t make the jump as applications for Alpha were thin and relying on FX!32 was something we weren’t prepared to do. Good times.
Not many people can name drop FX!32 like that. I remember feeling like that software was magic back then.
For anybody that does not know the reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FX!32
Don’t forget this beauty.
It ran NT4 x86 binaries on MIPS and PPC as well as Alpha.
http://retro.ircx.net.pl/nt/mips/wx86/
Also note that’s the origin of “Program Files (x86)” almost a decade before AMD64.
Since that page links to my software, note that there’s also a MIPS native build, so wx86 isn’t required: http://www.malsmith.net/yori/nt3x/
Really, I think the NT MIPS ecosystem is bigger than ever. Open source code and open source development tools have enabled people to do things they couldn’t have done in 1996. For those who haven’t seen it, here’s someone targeting NT MIPS with Rust: https://gamozolabs.github.io/fuzzing/2021/11/16/rust_on_nt_mips.html
I worked at DEC (or rather digital as they branded themselves by then) for ~14 months in the software build department, FX!32 was great, especially for work related useful programs such as Winamp 😀
MIPS Windows NT 4 in qemu – Installation tutorial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQMfGTMeeaA
I follow the steps from the previous article here on osnews.
I use a qcow2 image ready made by the author of the article Hein-Pieter van Braam.
Then I install Windows NT 4 for MIPS from scratch in qemu.
I worked at a company in the mid-90’s to early 2000’s that ran NT on some pretty beefy Dec Alpha machines. Apparently had I kept all the hardware I had when I left there, I could have retired on it now.
If you are going to play around with machines of that era, check out the Windows NT Resource Kit ( from Microsoft ). It contained all manner of fun stuff. Many people are unaware that it included a port of the GNU C Compiler for example. The Resource Kit was sold by Microsoft ( it was about $150 I believe ) and so Microsoft where Free Software distributors way back in the mid-90’s! It is almost a trivia question.
The US Fed printed too much money, so there’s a lot of hot money going around, people are interested in Retro computing tech and the Ebay prices have exploded. Voodoo2’s, SGI computers etc. All have gone up 300-400% on what they used to be. COVID lockdowns gave a lot of people free time to pursue Retro Computing hobbies and diverted the money away from holidays/restaurants etc. 5 years ago you could buy a Voodoo2 for $30-50. Now they’re $400-$500. Money got cheap and collectibles got expensive.