Newsgroups: comp.arch
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Byte ordering
Message-ID: <1990Feb5.192958.12091@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <9656@spool.cs.wisc.edu> <1990Feb2.215421.24894@utzoo.uucp> <1991@osc.COM>
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 90 19:29:58 GMT

In article <1991@osc.COM> jgk@osc.COM (Joe Keane) writes:
>>... As far as *technical* issues, the only ones I'm aware of
>>weakly favor big-endian: it's the network standard order, which makes life
>>easier for protocol code,
>
>Isn't this also ``backward compatibility with previous mistakes''?  And what
>about RS-232?

It's a compatibility issue, yes, but it's compatibility with a widespread
standard rather than just with your predecessors' mistakes.

I don't see the relevance of RS232.  Nothing except the UART chips ever
cares about the bit order on the wire; all the computers involved deal
with the data a byte/character at a time.  It's the same way on Ethernet:
the bytes are transmitted a bit at a time, but almost nobody knows or
cares which bit order is used.
-- 
SVR4:  every feature you ever |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
wanted, and plenty you didn't.| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu