Apologies for this question but I am a bit of a noob with Delphi. I am using Dejan TComport component to get data from a serial port. A box of equipment connected to the port sends about 100 bytes of binary data to the serial port. What I want to do is extract the bytes as numerical values into an array so that I can perform calculations on them. TComport has a method Read(buffer,Count) which reads DATA from input buffer. function Read(var Buffer; Count: Integer): Integer; The help says the Buffer variable must be large enough to hold Count bytes but does not provide any example of how to use this function. I can see that the Count variable holds the number of bytes received but I can't find a way to access the bytes in Buffer. TComport also has a methord Readstr which reads data from input buffer into a STRING variable. function ReadStr(var Str: String; Count: Integer): Integer; Again the Count variable shows the number of bytes received and I can use Memo1.Text:=str to display some information but obviously Memo1 has problems displaying the control characters. I have tried various ways to try and extract the byte data from Str but so far without success. I am sure it must be easy. Here's hoping.