> > IIRC, all the NetBSD powerpc architectures are big-endian.
> 
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the endianess on mips a hardware feature,
> i.e. wired by motherboard logic?

On MIPS1 (R2000/R3000), it is hardware feature.
On MIPS3 (R4000) or later (R5000/R10000), it is not hardware feature.

MIPS3 kernel theoretically can run both mipsle/mipsbe binaries.
(MIPS1 kernel does not.)

Of course there is performance 

> On powerpc machines this is different in that you can switch endianess on
> the fly. So we can define NetBSD/powerpc to run big-endian on all machines.
> (If someone really wants to run little-endian programs (arrgh, NT...) on
> these machines, you could (at least in theory) run those on a big endian
> kernel, too).

Hmmm. Perhaps I should withdraw the opinion that `uname -m' should be
changed on powerpc.
But I still think that binary format should be changed to "powerpcle" and
"powerpcbe".
--
soda