At 07:09 PM 9/27/99 , Don Hurwitz wrote:
>At Rockwell International Electronic Commerce,
>we are looking for an upgrade path from a
>  
>      VAX 11/785 running UNIX System V (Release 3.1b)
>      ['uname -a' reports "3.1b 0528 vax7xx"]
>  
>to a more modern platform (hardware and OS) which is
>binary compatible with the above VAX/SVR3 combo.
>  
>We are limited to a "binary-compatible platform" solution, which
>will enable us to migrate (retain) the executables for our custom
>development tools (cross-compiler/assembler/linker) from this platform
>to a more modern VAX or VAX compatible machine, since we no longer have
>the tool sources (there, I said it) and can't re-compile on some/any
>other platform.

A number of emulations exist under NetBSD such as SVR4 and
IBCS2 (similar to SVR3).

An emulation for SVR3.1 could be written giving enough 
information about SVR3 (syscalls and structure passed to
those syscalls and target executables to see if they work).

I assume this system is XCOFF so the kernel will need be to
be taught to recognize and execute them.

But it could done (given enough interest or money).  


-- 
Matt Thomas               Internet:   matt@3am-software.com
3am Software Foundry      WWW URL:    http://www.3am-software.com/bio/matt/
Cupertino, CA             Disclaimer: I avow all knowledge of this message