oh right...well i was just trying to see if it would work at all - then was going to try to optimize it or use other techniques to get it going faster. but you have a great point - keeping the data stream lean from the get go will save alot of overhead and make everything faster for sure.
i guess i started with Messenger because my host software sending from the PC easily spits out strings, but i had a harder time getting it to send raw ascii bytes - as strange as that may sound. i'll try retooling it and give it a go with your code as an example.
thanks so much!