Thanks, I,m using a Xtal, found that out the hard way, could'nt work out why there were so many errors, after puting xtal in cct, errors disappeared. And yes, I'm using a 628.

I kind of figured that "aa" stepcnt was a word representation of stepcnt and that on the other end it would need to be split in two to find the original values. I started off with #stepcnt but on the vb side after sending a whole bunch of words, errors started appearing. Never thought of the VAL function though. I just placed the value from the PIC straight into a txt box. Anyway, I hope my code is not to painfull.

Thanks again

John