New port

["Mackinlay, Patrick" <patrick dot mackinlay at kjv dot com dot au>]

I'm working with an old Intergraph workstation based on the Clipper
processor. I'm keen to develop binutils support for this platform, but would
like some hints on where to begin. The processor is a RISC-ish device (for
which I have instruction encodings), and the native OS is an early version
of SVR3. As far as I understand, the object format is very standard COFF.

Anyway, what I want to know is:
a) what's the "best" existing port to duplicate and modify - I'd like
something that's clean and straightforward, without too much legacy of
non-BFD code etc.
b) what are the main new files I need to add? Some kind of a guide to what
the minimum required for a given tool would be very helpful.

As far as I can tell, the best place to start might be with ld, which should
not require any new code (perhaps apart from the magic number), due to the
standard target format?

PS: Can someone explain to me the difference between a.out and COFF? Do I
have it right that the a.out format is simply the format for an executable
as opposed to a linkable object?

Regards,
Pat Mackinlay
Kellogg Joint Venture