Data Handling - Conversions (Hexadecimal)

Data Handling and Coding

Binary code is made up of 1’s and 0’s. Difficult combinations of 1’s and 0’s represent each
character.
When a computer uses data it needs to firstly be converted into binary numbers. The most
popular way of representing binary code is ASCII (American Standard Code for Information
Interchange). Each character is one byte.

Hexadecimals
Because binary numbers eventually become so long, people such as programmers find it hard
to follow thousands of 1’s and 0’s. This is why the ’hexadecimal’ system was produced.
The hexadecimal system is a base 16 number system made up of the following: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4,
5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E and F. The 8 bits are then divided by 2 to make 2 groups of 4, also
known as ‘nibbles’. Each group of 4 bits are represented by 1 hexidecimal digit. This means
that 2 hexadecimal digits make up an 8-bit byte.

The following table is an example of hexadecimal use. If the number 1 is placed in the 256
column for example, the decimal number will be ‘256′ because the 1 X 256 = 256. Although
if 2 was placed in the 256 coloumn the decimal number will be 2 X 256 = 512. If we wanted
to only represent ‘512′ the hexadecimal will be ‘0200′ because we want no ‘4096’s, 16’s or
1’s’, just 2 256’s to multiply to 512.

Because the number 10 consists of 2 digits the computer will recognise it as 2 different
numbers and will not work so the letters A, B, C, D, E and F are used.

A= 10
B= 11
C= 12
D= 13
E= 14
F= 15

For example. (a) in table 1 reads a hexidecimal of 1D (001D), meaning [0 X 4096] + [0 X

256] + [1 X 16] + [13 X 1] = 29

Another example is (j) in table 1 reads a hexidecimal of 10DE (10DE), meaning [1 X 4096] +
[0 X 256] + [13 X 16] + [14 X 1] = 4318

So basically the least number of digits need to be used to create ther hexadecimal.

Hexadecimal 4096 256 16 1 Decimal Number

a 1D 0 0 1 D 29
b 13 0 0 1 3 19
c 18 0 0 1 8 24
d 130 0 1 3 0 304
e 274 0 2 7 4 628
f 142 0 1 4 2 322
g 34A 0 3 4 A 842
h 2A21 2 A 2 1 10785
i FF 0 0 F F 255
 j 10DE 1 0 D E 4318

Decimal Number 4096 256 16 1 Hexadecimal

a 600 0 2 5 8 258
b 21 0 0 1 5 15
c 40 0 0 2 8 28
d 42 0 0 2 A 2A
e 258 0 1 0 2 102
f 342 0 1 5 6 156
g 612 0 2 6 4 264
h 4096 1 0 0 0 1000
i 4134 1 0 2 6 1026
j 1000 0 3 E 8 3E8

Later on hexadecimal codes start to look like this: