There is an mscomm property to allow Null chars to be discarded. Make sure theis is set to false. Use binary input mode also. This always works for me. Joe -----Original Message----- From: pic microcontroller discussion list [mailto:PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU]On Behalf Of D Lloyd Sent: 25 March 2003 08:09 To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU Subject: [EE]: Alternative (free) MSCOMM control? Hi, I have a colleague.. ...that seems to be having some problems with the standard MSCOMM control delivered with VB6. From what I understand, he is attempting to fetch a number of characters when triggered by the 'ON COM' event, but it seems that there are often less characters available than are reported in the input length property. I seem to remember something like this being discussed on this list way back in the past (although I cannot find any archived info) and someone suggested that they knew where there was a free VB Control that did the same job as the MSCOMM control but better. Can anyone remember if this is correct/point me to the link ? Failing that, I suppose that he could just be using the MSCOMM control incorrectly; does anyone have any examples of a reliable vb<-->micro uart scheme that he can compare? Regards, Dan -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details. -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.