Binary Compatibility 80286

[Doug Gwyn <gwyn>]

> Uh, excuse me, but Mr. Forsberg neglected the *approved* version
> of UNIX System V/286; the one that has passed port acceptance.

See, that's the problem with trying to establish binary standards:
who sets the standard?  In this case, the only two logical choices
are AT&T and Intel, and in spite of AT&T's efforts, the package
vendors did their own thing(s).

I don't know all the details, but I suspect the AT&T system used
COFF and the Xenix system used Microsoft's proposed object file
format; the two are of course different.  (Incidentally, after
working with COFF for a while, I found it to be insufficiently
portable.  I haven't evaluated Microsoft's proposal.)  And common
object file format is only a small part of establishing binary
compatibility.