In message <199807231750.TAA17410@kurt.tools.de> Wolfgang Solfrank writes:
: Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the endianess on mips a hardware feature,
: i.e. wired by motherboard logic?

You are wrong :-).  At least the R4000 (and I think the R3000) have a
bit that says "run in the opposite mode" which allows one to run
userland big endian binaries on a little endian machine.  This feature
was put in place for DEC, iirc, because they had to run some big
endian binaries on their ulrix boxes (little endian) for something or
another.

It is true that you need to boot a specific kernel for the motherbaord
that is either big endian or little endian.

Warner