big endian vs. little endian, why 1955

Because the 8008 was designed by semiconductor designers not computer peoplem, and they did things to minimise the silicon used. In this case it allows microcode to be re-used. So if you have a short relative jump, and a long relative dump, you can re-use the microcode, So you you always add the LSB in, and then just have a check in the end that says "is this a 16 bit jump" and if so get the MSB and add into the upper half. Once the 8008 had started that way, they continued for compatability reasons. Contrast this with the 6800 etc. which was designed to be easy to program. And the way the 68xx were less compatible as they evolved, but much nicer CPUs to code for. Then wonder why the 80love series was so successfull.

Don't you get the same finicty compiler on Solaris (I buttume you mean GCC) unles you have mega bucks. SparcUltra 5's seem good value at present. I keep thinking about updating my Sparc10. its ever so slow. However Solaris has so many "non UNIX" things I wonder weather to go Linux but I have heard its sssslllllllooooowwwwwwww ish on the SPARC...