>Is there a way to convert ASCII files to EBCDIC format from within Visual Foxpro 5.0?

There is no way to built in function to do this in VFP, but here's a link to a file that may help in coding your own:
toadebc.zip
The file contains a collection of source code files to do the conversion in Pascal, C, and Assembler. It seems to me you should be able to create something similiar in VFP fairly easily.

HTH