So apparently I have to ask again in here. I'm on Xubuntu and my MIPS 'as' is doing stupid optimizations and breaking my code.
For some reason I've had to compile it as "mips-unknown-linux-gnu-as" and similar. It doesn't support the -mno-gpopt flag, so I call it as such:
mips-unknown-linux-gnu-as -EB -mabi=32 -march=vr4300 -mtune=vr4300 -mno-shared -K --warn $1.asm -o $1.elf

Then I throw together some quick dummy code:
LUI $k1, 0x8034
LB $t0, 0xB21D($k1)

BNEL $t0, $zero, next
ADDIU $t0, $t0, 0x0001
BEQZ $a0, next
ADDIU $t0, $t0, 0xFFFF
LUI $t3, 0x5555

next: ADDIU $zero, $zero, 0x1234
and here's what it gets turned into: 0: 3c1b8034 lui k1,0x8034
4: 3c080001 lui t0,0x1
8: 011b4021 addu t0,t0,k1
c: 8108b21d lb t0,-19939(t0)
10: 55000006 bnezl t0,2c
14: 00000000 nop
18: 25080001 addiu t0,t0,1
1c: 10800003 beqz a0,2c
20: 00000000 nop
24: 2508ffff addiu t0,t0,-1
28: 3c0b5555 lui t3,0x5555

0000002c :
2c: 24001234 li zero,4660
For some reason it's decided to go changing how I use $k1, and rearranged my branches in a manner that is anywhere from inefficient to just broken depending on the code. Adding the -g or -g2 flags does not change this.

Additionally, objcopy isn't able to extract the code (though objdump disassembles it fine). It just outputs 24 bytes of zeros, or nothing at all.

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