How does the hex to dec convertor work?

Donzo Bonzo

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I find it fascinating. I put in the hex, and hey presto it's done, converted to dec. Anyone know the secret behind this?

And can it be worked out on paper?????

Thanks, DB. :)
 

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Donzo Bonzo said:
I find it fascinating. I put in the hex, and hey presto it's done, converted to dec. Anyone know the secret behind this?

And can it be worked out on paper?????

Thanks, DB. :)

No secrets just depends whether your brain can accept more than one counting system. e.g Binary (base 2) is 0 and 1 two numbers hence Binary, decimal is to the base 10....i.e. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 and hexadecimal is to the base 16. i.e. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,a,b,c,d,e,f. Within most programming languages there are functions you can call (i.e. engines) to do all the donkey work for you. I do vaguely remember something from my learning days but I cannot put my hand directly on by notes. Needless to say most scientific calculators have this function embedded in the chip and there a large number of programs that can do this conversion avalable as freeware. If you do not believe me do a google search for hex to dec and see how many pages you get.
 

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In the early days of ICL mainframes, magnetic tapes were numbered in octal 1 -8 (no 9 or 10). We sometimes converted bianary to octal manually.
 

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jimbo said:
In the early days of ICL mainframes, magnetic tapes were numbered in octal 1 -8 (no 9 or 10). We sometimes converted bianary to octal manually.

And your still here to tell the tale ( We are glad jimbo )
Lol
I think my brain would be fried (more than it is)

:-hammer
 

Donzo Bonzo

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Bloody hell, that all went way above my head!!! :)

Thanks, but I'll be sticking with the convertor. LOL.

Cheers, all the same. :)
 
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