>I see you have this working but it occurred to me that it might be possible to do this in TSQL using CONVERT/COLLATE. But my SQL knowledge is so limited I'm not sure exactly how you'd do it :-{

Seems to work, Viv

declare @Tmp table
(	Passwd	char(10)
);

insert into @Tmp (Passwd) values ('†12345');

select convert(binary(10), Passwd) from @Tmp;

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms187928.aspx