>-----Original Message-----
>From: Philip Stortz [mailto:madscientist.at.large@EARTHLINK.NET]
>Sent: 17 June 2004 10:35
>To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
>Subject: Re: [PIC:] Trying to interpret a .hex file
>
>
>can someone please define "big endian" and "little endian" for
>me, i understand that some machines have high byte first and
>small byte last, and some are the other way around, which of
>these are which when using the "endian" terminology?  fwiw, i
>have always preferred high to low value order of bytes, since
>that's the way we write ordinary human interpretable numbers,
>and it makes the most sense to me computationally.  obviously
>there must be some logical or implementation advantage to
>having them what i consider "backwards" that i don't
>understand or know, that information would be appreciated as well.

Little Endian has the Least Significant word at the lowest address, Big
Endian has the Most Significant word at the lowest address.

On a PIC, the "endianess" is determined by the software functions that
handle multi-byte calculations, i.e. you could store the LSB at the highest
or lowest address.  On 16/32 etc bit micro's the achitecture of the mico
itself determines this.

Regards

Mike




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