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Windows XP 2002 for the Itanium: Unbridled rage
Engineers can test or develop legacy IA‑64 software without needing rare hardware, using a modern host and open‑source tools. The build process, including a fix for zlib’s fdopen macro and a manual libgcc copy, offers a reproducible workflow for reviving dead toolchains. This reduces the effort required to preserve or extend support for Itanium‑based firmware and operating systems.
Written by elseif from the cluster below · every claim links back to a sourceThe three things worth knowing
The Qemu fork provides functional IA‑64 (Merced) emulation capable of booting Windows XP/2003.
Building GCC 15.3.0 and binutils 2.46.0 for ia64‑linux‑gnu on macOS required fixing a zlib fdopen macro conflict and copying libgcc.a manually.
The workflow, dated July 31st 2026, shows that a modern macOS host can host a complete Itanium toolchain for legacy OS development.
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