In article ,
Ed Ruf wrote:

On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 13:37:26 -0500, in rec.photo.digital Kit Bonin
wrote:

Hi and thanks in advance,

I have a problem viewing NEF files on my PC (running Windows XP) after
transferring them from my Mac (OSX,10.3). I transfer them by either CD
or compact flash card. When I attempt to view them with Nikon Browser by
clicking the folder that they are in, the program crashes. If I attempt
to open them with Adobe Photoshop 6.0 or 7.0 the program does not crash,
but it is unable to read the files. If I convert them to either jpg or
tif files prior to transferring them, I have no problem. It seems to be
related to the file. I also attempted the transfer using Mac OS9 with
the same problems. I have no problems viewing NEF files downloaded
straight from my camera (Nikon D100) to my PC. Thanks.

NEFs are just specialized TIF files and IIRC at least way back when
there was an issue between Macs and PC of big vs little endian, ie
whether of not the two 8 bytes pieces were written high or low byte
first. Back in those days I used Graphic Converter as it had an option
to write either format. Don't know if that would work here. Can you
ftp files between machines?
__________________________________________________ ______
Ed Ruf Lifetime AMA# 344007 )
See images taken with my CP-990/5700 & D70 at
http://EdwardGRuf.com

Try using the xxd command in terminal.

% xxd -l 4 somefile

0000000: 4d4d 002a MM.*


Big-endian TIFF is 4d4d002a while little-endian TIFF is 49492a00. It's
actually mean to be visually recognizable in a hex dump. "MM.*" for
Motorola big-end and "II*." for Intel little-end.