>>If the format is one of many widely-supported formats, you might look at a package like Monarch or Data Junction to do the conversions for you, too.
>
>I was just browsing this thread...I solved this way back, one time, by uploading the binary file with FTP, then downloading as type binary, I think...something did the translating correctly, anyway...though it could have been specific to that mainframe...

Most of the mainframe connectivity stuff I've seen will take care of converting internal binary formats to a straight ASCII download - it's a whole lot easier than rolling your own COBOL computational data formats and pulling it down in a more compact binary format.