Tony,
I am in no way an expert, but I'll just throw out a couple of thoughts I had.
Quote Originally Posted by tsteele
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Depending on the logger, there can be anything from 1 up to 500 lines.
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the zzzzzzzz will be a number like 10978561 and the xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx will be an ascii text message up to 20 characters long
That's a lot of data for a PIC to swallow in one gulp! If I understand correctly it adds up to a possible 14,000 bytes [(8 bytes+20bytes)*500 possible lines] once the extraneous data is removed. This amount of data won't fit into any current PICs ram, so it will need to be stored somewhere else as soon as it is recieved and processed. (And it will have to be processed quickly enough to keep up with the incoming data rate)

One option is to go with some sort of external memory.

Another possible solution may be to get a pic with a large amount of program space (lots of options) and use the WRITECODE (with READCODE & ERASECODE) to add the data to the code memory space that is not being used. I've never used these features of PBP or the PIC, but you might do a search of the forum and see what you come up with. I wouldn't be suprised if one of the real smart folks on this forum have already posted a lot of info on using these commands.

Some other things to keep in mind:
- Most flash and EEPROMs have limited Write cycles to consider
- They also take a little more time to write data (some have to be erased before a write, adding to the time for each byte to be processed)
- An external storage device will need an interface that is fast enough to keep up with the incoming data processing.
- With enough memory, and time between data streams, you might even do the data processing/extraction after data reception is complete.

Good Luck,
Steve