You want something like this: >>> a = '\x1dz' >>> (ord(a[0])<<8) + ord(a[1]) 7546
Each of the two characters represents one byte of a 16-bit integer. It doesn't matter if they are ascii or hex -- there are still exactly two bytes in each of your strings. The ord() function converts a character to its 8-bit ASCII code. The << operator shifts the first character 8 bits to the left. Note that the byte order might need to be swapped, depending on the implementation of your custom hardware. e.g. (ord(a[1])<<8) + ord(a[0]) -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
