[Info-vax] VAX vs. MV/8000 [was Re: Hard links on VMS ODS5 disks]

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2023-08-30 10:35, terry-... at glaver.org wrote:
> On Monday, August 28, 2023 at 8:32:05 AM UTC-4, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>> I've tried to stay out, and don't want to get too deep in.
>> But in a sense, my question/issue would be: Can you take a binary for
>> x86 and run it without any "mode bit", or anything else, on an x86-64
>> and it works?
> 
> Sure:

[...]

Well. Unfortunately, that don't prove a thing. As the OS knows what kind 
of binary it is going to execute, it can set things up in all kind of 
ways for you.

Basically, if we imagine that we had an old VAX, with PDP-11 
compatibility, and we built the program for either machine, and the OS 
had the understanding, your example would work just fine there too.
And we know that the VAX have a compatibility bit for the PDP-11 mode.

But I think we already probed this enough. :-)

   Johnny