It's a BgerFD than I can handle

[Walt Pawley <walt at wump dot org>]

According the binutils list archives, at least some one out there claims to
have used objcopy to convert ELF to XCOFF for use with an Open Firmware
boot situation (Momchil Velikov <velco@fadata.bg> for one - actually, he
referred to OF 1.0.5, which I'm assuming is a particular Open Firmware). At
least on the surface this seems like a sensible thing to do. I, however,
have not been able to fathom the particular bit of "abracadabra" that one
must type at the prompt to make it happen.

For example, I've got a number of installations available to me here. If I
invoke objcopy with --help option, I get lists of supported formats, like...

(from Mac OS X)
/usr/libexec/binutils/objcopy: supported targets: mach-o-be mach-o-le
mach-o-fat pef pef-xlib sym srec symbolsrec tekhex binary ihex

(from Yellow Dog Linux 3.0.1)
objcopy: supported targets: elf32-powerpc aixcoff-rs6000 elf32-powerpcle
ppcboot elf64-powerpc elf64-powerpcle elf64-little elf64-big elf32-little
elf32-big srec symbolsrec tekhex binary ihex

(from a Darwinports installation)
/opt/local/bin/powerpc-rtems-objcopy: supported targets: elf32-powerpc
aixcoff-rs6000 elf32-powerpcle ppcboot elf32-little elf32-big srec
symbolsrec tekhex binary ihex

... none of which seem to be quite what I'm expecting, at the least. I've
tried a few and am still in the process of trying to figure out whether one
might be useful.

This seems a peculiar puzzle to me. In the Darwinports installation choices
there are only things like powerpc-rtems-binutils which seem to be about
cross development only and between particular sorts of systems. I chose to
have it install powerpc-rtems-binutils to see what would happen, thinking
that it wouldn't take all that long - it's just some small conversion
programs, after all (I'm on a dial-up connection and have to think about
such things). Some 6,000 files later, what I ended up with twitches but it
doesn't seem to do the dance I need. That, or I'm just to dumb to tell that
can.

Alms for a late coming newbie, anyone?

-- 
Walter M. Pawley <walt@wump.org>
Wump Research & Company
676 River Bend Road, Roseburg, OR 97470
         541-672-8975