Sounds like you are getting there.
I've got that sinking feeling there's some way to go yet. It would be nice to be pleasantly surprised though.

I think it (the program) needs some sort of event handler / buffer to store and read the data_in in bytes and then make words.

If you are learning from scratch and do not mind windows only then keep at it. IMHO
I'll stick at the VB2008 for now and see what I can 'cobble' together.

Dave