getting info into the serial object

hi - i posted this over on the ableton forum but figured it would maybe help better here too

i been learning AMX programming over the last year. if you don't know, it's what is used to control audio visual equipment in conference rooms

http://www.amx.com/Default.asp

anyway - i been learning it by buying a cheap AMX processor and touchpanel off ebay and then slowly slowly getting all my AV gear at home to talk to each other so i can control it all from the touchpanel

it works pretty well so far, but it's taken a fair while. i got record player, tape deck, minidisc, dvd, vhs, tv, laptop all sorted out.

then i hit on the idea of controlling ableton with it via max for live - as the processor has a load of serial ports in the back. the programming language it uses is called netlinx, and i wrote some code to send serial strings out of the port down a serial to usb cable in to my laptop

the cable is fine as i can send strings down it from netlinx studio and the Rx light comes on on the front of the processor and when i press a button on the touchpanel i can see the Tx light go on.

i'm using the serial object in Max and i can see it picks up the serial usb cable in the max window, and it gets the right COM port too. the baud rate, stop bits etc are all ok and the same. the cable is null modem

but at the moment it doesn't seem to be getting any data - can i ask if there is any preferred format that i should be sending data into the serial object with? hex or ascii or decimal for instance?

i tried sending a bang to the serial object as it said it would output data into the max window, then i tried setting up a metro too. but at the moment - no joy

http://www.hw-group.com/products/hercules/index_en.html

i used this serial testing program to check if the cable is ok. and it is. when i press the numbered buttons on the touchpanel i get #SOH #STX #ETX #EOT which are the numbers 1,2,3,4 in ascii. but i can't figure out why they dont get picked up in Max. they should do as i'm using the same COM port

can i ask if it is necessary to convert these numbers into decimal somehow or is the serial object not bothered about the format of the data?

i'm sure it's just something simple that i'm missing. i've basically just used the serial object setup from the helpfile and changed it a bit.
can someone please have a look at this patch i've made to get the serial data? i don't get why it isnt working. i have also tried setting the code in the AMX processor to send the numbers 1,2,3,4 and when i test it using the hercules test software above it works fine. i press button 1 and the number 1 gets sent as data, i press button 2 and 2 is sent etc. but still, nothing seems to be picked up by the serial object

any advice greatly appreciated

thanks