IRIX 6.2 question

Bear with me here - I'm within 1 month of being on-topic. I have a odd swmgr/inst problem on my 6.2 machine. I've installed 6.2 base, the latest recommended/required tardist (Sept. '99), POSIX and Y2k. Now wenever I launch SWMGR, it complains "Syntax error in mach expression TARGOS >= 1274627340" I've figured out roughly what's going on (something doesn't like a certain software level identifier) but I'm not sure really what's going on or what to do about it. Does anyone else have this problem? USENET is silent - unusual on a SGI question. trailer question - has anyone tried extracting the dev_IRIX4 files from IDO5.3 and using them on IRIX 4.0.5? Haven't tried moving them over to DouglasIRIS yet (4.0.5/3.3.2 dualie), but I'm rolling the idea around. file indicates that they are the ecoff binaries . . . back and forth, I know - don't have much of an attention span, I guess. The CADDStation is still progressing, though.