In message <199911220257.SAA11204@lestat.nas.nasa.gov>Jason Thorpe writes

>It's already in sys/compat/ultrix, and it should be made to work on the VAX,
>too :-)

AFAIK, the bits in sys/compat/ultrix will work on a vax.
some of the syscall numbers are different, but I think I got those when
I first committed the code.

I happn to know that 4.3BSD (reno, approximately) would run several
Vax Ultrix binaries, from a mid-80s vintage ultrix. (some sick person
once offered to loan  me Ultrix 1.1 on rx50). so the sigtramp/sigcode
stuff probably once just worked. Nowdays, it'd need vax1k compat and
a.out cmopat set up, but that shouldn't be too hard.

As for what it supports: everything I could get my hands on,
which did not require any of:	
	a) DECnet
	b) LAT
	c) YP between NetBSD binaries and Ultrix binaries
	    (the Ultrix ypbind/ypserv had an endian bug, and mixing
		YP requests from an Ultrix binary wiht the NetBSD YP
		leads to sending packets to your own IP address, only
		byteswapped. I contemplated adding a hook to kludge around this
		but sanity prevailed).
	d) firmware IOCTLs.
	e) the Ultrix license manager.


emacs worked. X apps worked. Old Ultrix 4.1 Xservers worked.
framemaker reportedly worked.  tcsh worked, tho' at one point you'd
have to type retrun twice per line due to a termios/job-control botch.
ISTR that the Ultrix seti@home works.

Emacs kmem grovelling (to find loadaverage) broke, because it
expected to find /vmunix; a symlink cured that (while the kernel names
wer the same).  When we went to ELF kernels, that got a little harder.
A tool to build an (mipsel ecoff, vax a.out) /vmunix with symbols
from /netbsd would be a nice touch.

Early development ws done by copmiling under Ultrix with the Ultrix
4.2a compiler, and booting ECOFF format kernels off an Ultrix disk.
Apart from the YP insanity, it'd go multi-user.  Then /usr/bin/login
would get unhappy about running on an unlicensed system.

I'l have to go ask the Nice Man who's decommissioning a /260 
for the old Ultrix disks, and see if it'll still go multi-user.