Windows XP 2002 for the Itanium: Unbridled rage

3 hours ago

A Qemu fork by Malte Kuhlmann now emulates the Itanium Merced CPU, capable of running Windows XP/2003.
Building the cross-compiler (GCC 15.3.0 and binutils 2.46.0) on macOS required workarounds like editing zlib headers.
The Qemu build uses a custom 'merced' branch, requiring careful configuration to avoid macOS dependency conflicts.
Windows XP Itanium installation succeeds about 1/5 of the time; RDP is recommended for better usability.
Future support is expected for Windows Server 2003 and early Itanium builds, but not other OSes like HP-UX or VMS.
The project highlights ongoing development, with potential for fixing binary compatibility and improving the emulator.

A new Intel Itanium (IA-64) emulator version 0.1 has been released, capable of booting Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP 64-bit for Itanium.
The emulator was developed by Yufeng Gao with assistance from gdwnldsKSC, achieving a breakthrough in non-x86 CPU emulation, though it runs slowly at performance levels comparable to a 486 on modern hardware.
Current limitations include no support for OpenVMS, HP-UX, Linux, or BSD, but future development may expand compatibility, with hopes for OpenVMS emulation.

Principia was originally released in 2014 and supported Windows XP, but modern toolchains and dependencies like UCRT have since made this compatibility difficult to guarantee.
The project aims to bring Principia back to Windows XP using an open-source build, leveraging SDL for cross-platform support and requiring minimal code changes.
A custom toolchain was built using GCC, binutils, and mingw-w64, targeting i686-w64-mingw32 with MSVCRT and WIN32_WINNT set to 0x0501 for Windows XP compatibility.

RADV is the open-source Mesa Vulkan driver for AMD GPUs, now the de facto Vulkan driver on Linux after AMD discontinued its proprietary alternative.
Porting RADV to Windows would enable a shared codebase across platforms, easier debugging, faster fixes, and community contributions benefiting all users.
Faith Ekstrand's initial work proved feasibility by reverse-engineering the WDDM2 interface, getting a 3D model to display, but with limitations.

Porting an operating system is a complex task requiring infrastructure such as compilers, debuggers, and libraries.
Digital's Alpha Migration Tools Group ported Linux to the DEC Alpha with goals: free, resource-efficient, high performance, source compatibility, and fast schedule.
Initial port used Linux 1.0 code base, 32-bit implementation, existing Digital Unix PALcode and SRM firmware.

Brow6el is a full-featured terminal web browser using Chromium (CEF) with support for Sixel and Kitty graphics protocols.
The main repository has moved from Codeberg to a new location; Codeberg is kept for reference only.
It features Vim-style modal keyboard control with Standard, Insert, Visual, and Mouse modes.

A new Intel Itanium (IA-64) emulator version 0.1 has been released, capable of booting Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP 64-bit for Itanium.
The emulator was developed by Yufeng Gao with assistance from gdwnldsKSC, achieving a breakthrough in non-x86 CPU emulation, though it runs slowly at performance levels comparable to a 486 on modern hardware.
Current limitations include no support for OpenVMS, HP-UX, Linux, or BSD, but future development may expand compatibility, with hopes for OpenVMS emulation.

Principia was originally released in 2014 and supported Windows XP, but modern toolchains and dependencies like UCRT have since made this compatibility difficult to guarantee.
The project aims to bring Principia back to Windows XP using an open-source build, leveraging SDL for cross-platform support and requiring minimal code changes.
A custom toolchain was built using GCC, binutils, and mingw-w64, targeting i686-w64-mingw32 with MSVCRT and WIN32_WINNT set to 0x0501 for Windows XP compatibility.

RADV is the open-source Mesa Vulkan driver for AMD GPUs, now the de facto Vulkan driver on Linux after AMD discontinued its proprietary alternative.
Porting RADV to Windows would enable a shared codebase across platforms, easier debugging, faster fixes, and community contributions benefiting all users.
Faith Ekstrand's initial work proved feasibility by reverse-engineering the WDDM2 interface, getting a 3D model to display, but with limitations.

Porting an operating system is a complex task requiring infrastructure such as compilers, debuggers, and libraries.
Digital's Alpha Migration Tools Group ported Linux to the DEC Alpha with goals: free, resource-efficient, high performance, source compatibility, and fast schedule.
Initial port used Linux 1.0 code base, 32-bit implementation, existing Digital Unix PALcode and SRM firmware.

Brow6el is a full-featured terminal web browser using Chromium (CEF) with support for Sixel and Kitty graphics protocols.
The main repository has moved from Codeberg to a new location; Codeberg is kept for reference only.
It features Vim-style modal keyboard control with Standard, Insert, Visual, and Mouse modes.

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