[5][6] The HEX file is then read by a programmer to write the machine code into a PROM or is transferred to the target system for loading and execution.
[14]: 11 In 1973, Intel's "software group" consisted only of Bill Byerly and Kenneth Burgett, and Gary Kildall as an external consultant doing business as Microcomputer Applications Associates (MAA) and founding Digital Research in 1974.
[15][5][24][20][21][22][23] Programs that create HEX records typically use line termination characters that conform to the conventions of their operating systems.
], Intel introduced the new record types 02 and 03 (to add support for the segmented address space of the then-new 8086/8088 processors) in their Extended Intellec Hex Format.[when?]
Special names are sometimes used to denote the formats of HEX files that employ specific subsets of record types.
For example: This example shows a file that has four data records followed by an end-of-file record: Start code Byte count Address Record type Data Checksum Besides Intel's own extension, several third-parties have also defined variants and extensions of the Intel hex format, including Digital Research (as in the so-called "Digital Research hex format"[6][20]), Zilog, Mostek,[29][30] TDL,[30][31] Texas Instruments, Microchip,[39][40] c't, Wayne and Layne,[34] and BBC/Micro:bit Educational Foundation (with its "Universal Hex Format"[35]).
These can have information on program entry points and register contents, a swapped byte order in the data fields, fill values for unused areas, fuse bits, and other differences.
Alfred Arnold's cross-macro-assembler AS,[1] Werner Hennig-Roleff's 8051-emulator SIM51,[26] and Matthias R. Paul's cross-converter BINTEL[47] are also known to define extensions to the Intel hex format.