thank you all for the replys!
You guys sure do love the usart, I'll more than likely be using it, but for now im using serin2. Im using the internal osc and i was told the USART can cause problems if running at 4mHz, also i dont feel like extra hardware while just playing around on the breadboard.. (i.e Xtal, MAX232 and all the caps... ) but i will keep it in mind when i move on to building something final. also dont need the time out yet, im still trying to get a grasp on the code at hand, there wouldnt be anywhere to jump to atm... the following code is working as before, (T.Y. Ben) i still get garbage after my text like:

hello█ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █

which im guessing is the leftover array bytes all set to zero, which is a predefined character in my LCD which happens to be a big black block with some of its upper pixels missing (?) any idea's how to get around that? (getting rid of holder = 0 does nothing, still get the same result)

also if i do what Darrel says, what do i send the PIC? could you give me an example of what i should be sending it, and what will come out on my LCD?
maybe $48,$45,$4C,$4C$4F (hello)?


holder VAR BYTE[20]
LCDOUT $FE, 1
PAUSE 1000

main:
holder = 0
SERIN2 PORTB.0, 16780, [ str holder\20\13]
LCDOUT $FE,1, STR holder\20
PAUSE 2000

goto main:

BS2p Pbasic Code:

Start:
SEROUT 0,17405, ["hello",13]
PAUSE 1000
GOTO Start: