Pinball on 64-Bit Alpha AXP Windows NT
6 hours ago
- Pinball (3D Pinball for Windows – Space Cadet) was removed from Windows Vista due to a reported collision detection bug in 64-bit versions.
- NCommander challenged the removal in 2021, finding 64-bit versions playable on XP and pre-release Vista, suggesting UI incompatibility with Vista design.
- Raymond Chen later clarified the bug was specific to the 64-bit Alpha AXP version, which had a severe collision detection bug.
- The author debugged Pinball on Alpha NT emulators (QEMU/ES40) after fixes enabled booting the 64-bit build 2210.
- Two bugs were found: a WNDCLASSA struct alignment issue causing crashes in RegisterClassA, and pointer truncation in mciseq.dll due to ZAPNOT instruction misuse.
- Patching these bugs made Pinball work flawlessly on 64-bit Alpha NT, without encountering the original collision detector bug.
- Author speculates the collision bug might have been introduced after build 2210 or only manifests in release builds.