Thanks gadelhas, point taken. Right now the pic is not allowed to send data unless asked for it. The pic side code is modified from the CDC for dummies thread. This part is working great. Thanks to all of you.

Now for the next part (this seems like it should be easy, but of course not). The 18 bytes sent from the pic represent 9 words. From here on, I will just refer to 1 word. The rest will be the same action.
Let's call them data(0) and data(1). To put them together I did this:
Code:
detain =(data(0)*256)+data(1))
this works fine with 1 problem. It is really a signed number, so 65533 should read -2.
I have tried all sort of ways to get here, but continue to fail. I am sure it has to do with dim as or the way I am putting the word back together, but I am at a loss.

Anyone know how?