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The DEC Alpha Emulation Webpage

Last Updated: 22JUN07

Latest News!

  (22JAN2006) SRI is working on an Alpha emulator
  (03APR2003) Added Alpha page.

Introduction

At this point I don't know why anyone would want to emulate an Alpha. If you are a hobbyist looking to run OpenVMS, take a look at the VAX emulation available, or buy an inexpensive used Alpha. Having said this I've been watching the ES40 emulator with great interest as at some point this will no longer be true, and at this point it is the emulator with the greatest promise for Hobbyists.

If you are a commercial user I would seriously recommend looking at an upgrade to Itanium if your applications will run there. If not I would recommend looking at one of the newer models of Alpha that are still available.

Table of Contents

1. Obtain an emulator
2. Obtain Installation Documentation
3. Obtain Software
4. Obtain Further Documentation
5. Adding Additional Software
6. Mailing Lists
7. Other
8. Related PDP-4 Links

Step 1. Obtain an emulator:

- SimpleScalar
- SimOS at Stanford, also see this ftp site, and this ftp site.
- CHARON-AXP from SRI, supports OpenVMS, and support for Tru64 is on the way. Their performance claims make these products look fairly interesting.
- PersonalAlpha from Emulators International, a subsidary of SRI, runs on XP and is available for personal use. It emulates a system with 96MB RAM, ethernet, two disks, and ethernet. Based on the information they provide on the website, it appears that they have limited the speed, and with it only emulating 96MB of RAM, you will run into serious performance problems there. I've not tried this product out as I prefer to run OpenVMS on real hardware.
- AINT
- SIMH includes an EV56 CPU emulator, but none rest of a system is emulated (chipsets, SCSI, Ethernet, etc.)
- Virtutech has some sort of model libraries that emulate an EV5.
- ES40 emulator

Step 2. Obtain Installation Documentation:

Step 3. Obtain Software:

Step 4. Obtain Further Documentation

Step 5. Adding Additional Software

Mailing Lists

Other

Related Alpha Links

DEC Emulation Website (Main Page) -- PDP-1 -- PDP-4 -- PDP-7 -- PDP-8 -- PDP-9 -- PDP-10 -- PDP-11 -- PDP-15 -- VAX -- Alpha -- MIPS -- FPGA