Thanks, Russell....for the gentle reminder. Even if I don't always agree with you, you are a class act. To try again.... I'm having fun trying to get 16 bits out of VB into a PIC in two MSCOMM strings. Does anyone have any clues? Besides subtract 1 & divide by 256&>8, that is... TIA, C -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The list server can filter out subtopics (like ads or off topics) for you. See http://www.piclist.com/#topics