k im a lil confused coz of what blueroom and nigel said. just to confirm.... if i was to feed the data DIRECTLY from d pic uart to the PC, in terms of inversion nothing needs to be done, but it just needs to be converted from ttl to rs232.... however, because we are feeding it into a max232 chip to convert ttl to rs232, this chip will invert the signal from the PIC uart, which means, as soon as the data leaves pic uart, we invert it before supplying it to max232 chip, so that when max232 chip inverts it, and data leaves this chip, it is now in the correct "inversion" or polarity state? is this right? coz blueroom said it differently to nigel so its confused me a bit. thanks