After building i386 with OBJECT_FMT=a.out, some fairly critical
programs, like "login", give massive 'undefined symbol "des_SPtrans"'.

This predates the change to "ld_aout.so". [I haven't tried that, yet.]
It's likely related to the reloc errors which occur when building
libdes, with either a.out or ELF.

A simple work-around is it to edit .../libdes/Makefile to use the C
for des_enc.c and fcrypt_b.c rather than the assembler. I'm prepared
to do this, at the very least, for 'i386 && OBJECT_FMT == a.out' --
otherwise the resulting system is unusable -- but do we even need the
assembler on i386/ELF? What's the advantage?