sh ../../../../conf/newvers.sh
cc  -G 0 -mno-abicalls -msoft-float  -ffreestanding  -O2 -Werror -Wall -Wno-main
 -Wno-format-zero-length -Wpointer-arith -Wmissing-prototypes -Wstrict-prototype
s -Wno-sign-compare -Wno-uninitialized  -Dsgimips -I.  -I../../../../arch -I../.
./../.. -nostdinc -DMIPS3_ENABLE_CLOCK_INTR -DMIPS3 -DMAXUSERS=32 -D_KERNEL -D_K
ERNEL_OPT  -c vers.c
ld -T ../../../../arch/mips/conf/kern.ldscript -Ttext 0x80069000 -e start -G 0 -
x -o netbsd ${SYSTEM_OBJ} ${EXTRA_OBJ} vers.o
   text    data     bss     dec     hex filename
2996572   47664  265484 3309720  328098 netbsd
netbsd netbsd.ecoff
netbsd: not found
*** Error code 127

Stop.
make: stopped in /sys/arch/sgimips/compile/GENERIC

It appears that this happens because conf/Makefile.sgimips.inc .includes
bsd.own.mk which conditionally defines ELF2ECOFF only when USETOOLS
is "yes".  I built the kernel manually (cd compile/GENERIC;make ...).
There is another definition of ELF2ECOFF in bsd.sys.mk:
        ELF2ECOFF?=     elf2ecoff
which apparently is not being .included.

I'm not sure how this should be addressed, but that's the symptom
and what I've found.   Or is manually building a kernel generally
kinmotsu (forbidden) now?

-scott