Re: Crazy cross-MIPS-boards stunts possible?

 

Mips r2000 and r3000 devices were bi-endian, but endianess was chosen globally at reset.
If dimming memory serves, R4000 (MIPS-III?) could set endian-ness per process, and would change to "system endian-ness (reset-time endian-ness) when changing from user to kernel mode.

The kernel would need to keep track of process (address space) endian-ness. Byte-swapping of syscall parameters, etc. would be necessary. That's as far as I got, 20-odd years ago, when looking into supporting mipseb on r4k mipsel (or vice-versa). Doable, in principle, but it's never been a priority for anyone.