I worked at Digital on the Alpha/NT team at the time- the AXP 150 "Jensen" was my daily driver desktop- that machine, like most other DEC hardware, was incredibly well built.
It was listed as one of the reasons why Compaq had bailed on NT.
Also were you involved at all with the 64bit versions of NT?
It's cool that checked build got out, and kind of funny how the compiler was hiding in plain sight for decades, but glad I spotted it.