>When running the query it says "Type blob is not a defined system type".
>When casting to VarBinary(max) it says "Explicit conversion from data type text to varbinary(max) is not allowed."


OK, I thought you were selecting from a vfp table

try

declare @test table

  ( field1 text );

insert into @test values('1234');

select cast(cast(field1 as varchar(max)) as varbinary(max))
 from @test;

>
>>I don't think you need any encoding at all.
>>
>>If it comes from a memo field
>>

>>string query = "SELECT cast(memofieldname as blob)as memofieldname  FROM ...";
>>

>>
>>The result should give the file contents as is
>>
>>>I have a Text field in the database (populated from VFP Memo field) that contains the file contents.
>>>In VFP they get created FILETOSTR() and retrieved STRTOFILE(), which works without problems.
>>>
>>>Now in a C# solution I need to pick up the file contents and copy them to a file, but the resulting file is not valid. I am not sure what is the missing piece in the code:
>>>

>>>String fileName;
>>>fileName = Path.Combine(System.IO.Path.GetTempPath(),
>>>              "Samplefile.jpg");
>>>
>>>if (System.IO.File.Exists(fileName) == true)
>>>  {
>>>     System.IO.File.Delete(fileName);
>>>  }
>>>
>>>FileStream oFs = new
>>>          FileStream(fileName, FileMode.CreateNew, FileAccess.ReadWrite);
>>>
>>>StreamWriter oWriter = new StreamWriter(oFs);
>>>
>>>ASCIIEncoding asciiEncoding = new ASCIIEncoding();
>>>oWriter.Write(asciiEncoding.GetBytes(reminderMainRow.reFile)); //That is the memo field.
>>>oWriter.Flush();
>>>oWriter.Close();
>>>oFs.Close();
>>>