Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ncis.llnl.gov!helios.ee.lbl.gov!nosc!ucsd!sdcsvax!ucsdhub!hp-sdd!megatek!corona!mark
From: mark@corona.megatek.uucp (Mark Thompson)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: DECstation 3100 info. (LSB stan
Summary: Don't pick on the 1620
Message-ID: <470@megatek.UUCP>
Date: 23 Jan 89 19:44:36 GMT
References: <2932@imagen.UUCP> <46500043@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu>
Sender: news@megatek.UUCP
Reply-To: mark@corona.UUCP (Mark Thompson)
Organization: Megatek Corp.
Lines: 23

> From: mcdonald@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu Message-ID: <46500043@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu>
> <All machines
> <used the MSB standard until DEC "improved" the situation in 1970.

> Really? Can't anyone think of an exception? I seem to recall that
> 1620's (circa 1960) stored the least significant (decimal) digit
> first. (Recall that a character was two digits, and an integer,
> 2 to 20000 digits). Isn't that "little endian"?

ARRGH! Don't go beating up the poor little defenseless 1620, bless its
sweet departed soul. The 1620 was big endian like any other self-respecting
computer (well, ok, the PDP-11 is self-respecting, but it's only 16-bits,
which is ok).

What you are remembering is that the ADDRESS of a number was its little
end, but the data was stored from high to low in increasing addresses.

-mark
--

ucsd.edu!megatek!mark			mark "I'd rather be flying" thompson

--