Re: ELF psABI definition for VAX?

[Jason Thorpe <thorpej%me.com@localhost>]

> On Feb 3, 2025, at 3:52 PM, Thor Lancelot Simon <tls%panix.com@localhost> wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Feb 03, 2025 at 02:52:36PM -0800, Jason Thorpe wrote:
>> 
>>> On Feb 3, 2025, at 2:35???PM, Thor Lancelot Simon <tls%panix.com@localhost> wrote:
>>> 
>>> When Matt Thomas was originally working on this, we had both heard of, and I
>>> had actually seen, VAXen inside AT&T or its former subsidiaries that were
>>> running SVR4.
>> 
>> I mean, isn???t it entirely possible that it was using ECOFF?  (Didn???t Ultrix for VAX use ECOFF?)
> 
> I'm pretty sure Ultrix on VAX was a.out.  It could certainly run
> 4.2BSD a.out binaries.  It did have some kind of SVR2 or SVR3
> compatibility mode and it's possible that could run COFF binaries.
> I don't think I've seen ECOFF anywhere but on MIPS.

Oh, yah, I suppose it could have been COFF.  Prepending the E is probably just muscle memory at this point :-)

> Were there any SVR4 ports that didn't use ELF?  The AT&T spinout
> where I saw and briefly used the VAX running SVR4 also had a bunch
> of 3B20s and I think 3B15s, but aside from noticing that they were
> all powered from the overhead 48V busbars and that the VAX must
> have been a real nuisance for their electricians, I never did
> anything with those.

Yah, I dunno, I suppose it’s possible (at the very least, there must have been a transitional period during development).

(Hmmm. . .  there’s an EM_Z80 but not an EM_6809. . .)

-- thorpej