> 
> I've used GNU gas-2.3 and GNU binutils-2.3, configured and compiled
> (hosted) on a Decstation with Ultrix, targeted for a "mips-dec-bsd"
> (i.e., 4.4SBD a.out format), and gcc 2.5.8 configured for a
> DECstation, running on a 3MAX running NetBSD in Ultrix emulation mode,
> to build a libc.a, and compiled and linked a "hello, world: program,
> using "gcc -mgas -nostdinc" and native NetBSD header files..
> 

cool.

> I'm not sure what I should munge in the kernel to get some
> (temporary, throw-away) support for executing 4.4BSD a.out binaries,
> with native NetBSD libraries and system calls, to run.
> If I knew _exactly_ what I needed to change in the a.out header
> to get the binaries to run native, I'd write a GNU BFD back-end
> to support that.

Ted Mellon? has done the work to support 4.4 binaries....he is on this
mailing list.

i wrote a bfd back end thingy for the netbsd/mips format....i'll send
it to you when ig et home (3-4 hours)
> 
> Do I just need  to apply ntohl() to the first 32 bits of the a.out
> header, or is more work needed?

more work is needed...

> 
> I know enough about BFD that it's faster, for _me_, to take that path
> than to put time into porting whatever the standard NetBSD tools are
> to run on a pmax.

you can't make all the native tools work right now anyway.

you can make 'ld' work....

you can't make gas work because we run a pre-bfd gas which never had
mips support.

gcc can be made to work.

> 
> Did someone out there have 4.4BSD binaries running on a NetBSD
> kernel? Or vice-versa?

Talk to ted.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------