From: Charles Sandmann <sandmann AT clio DOT rice DOT edu>
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject: Re: a.out.h
Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2002 13:16:43 CST
Organization: Rice University, Houston TX
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> : And why did aout.h come with DJGPP v1?
> 
> Perhaps _that_ was an a.out system?

V1.09 was a.out, and did not support DPMI (Windows) at all.

V1.09d was a patched version of 1.09, supported DPMI (Windows 3.1, OS/2,
etc), but the a.out format required lots of wasted memory.  The smallest
images took a minimum of 5Mb of memory (each) to run.

V1.10 or V1.11 moved to COFF format for better debugging and DPMI memory
layout support.

So early DJGPP V1.x releases were a.out format, the later ones were
coff.