>>Well, there's a problem: text segments often contain things other than
>>executable instructions.  Common examples are string literals and jump
>>tables.  Even _identifying_ such things can be hard, never mind
>>correctly mapping them.  (I speak from experience here, having done
>>disassembly and uncompilation for VAX, SPARC, and 68k code in the past.
>>If a _human_ has trouble, it will border on impossible for a _program_
>>to have a prayer.)
>
>Yet, DEC seems to have done it quite successfully, with their MIPS ->
>Alpha converter, and their new x86 -> Alpha converter (for NT).  In my
>experience, the MIPS/DECstation -> Alpha converter worked very well
>(never used the other one).  How is that they were able to be so
>successful with binary conversion?

Don't they also have a SPARC->Alpha converter and claim that it
does better binary compatablity with SunOS binaries on Alphas than
Solaris does with them on SPARCS?