I’m asking this because data in game cartridges always seem to be shown in hexadecimal values instead of binary. I reckon maybe hexadecimal is more convenient than binary.
In: Technology
Hexadecimal is just a representation, it’s base 16, whereas normal counting is base 10, and binary is base two. That means 255 in decimal is equal to 0xFF in hexadecimal which is equal to 11111111 in binary. They’re all exactly the same ordinality.
The reason hexadecimal isn’t used outright is because of the physical nature in which data is stored. Magnets have two poles, north and south, transistors have two states, on or off, punch cards have two states – holes or no holes… Charles Babbage’s Analytical and Differential engines both had decimal based storage built out of gears in the 1830s. Anything that has ordinal distinct states can be used as storage, but binary is very simple and a minimal, reproducible unit. You can make decimal counters out of transistors, but it would take more parts, space, and energy than a binary system.
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