I'm sorry to take long in answering, I was making some tests, and I
think I found the solution.

The temp field with OCTETS works fine but when trying to connect with
Visual FoxPro (ODBC connection) I can't read ISO8859_1 and NONE
fields.
Solution: change all fields (may not be the best, but what I came
up).
How: Gathering all information you gave me I decided to extract
database metadata, change it to make all fields ISO8859_1 and execute
script creating a new database. Then just pumping data will do it.
I have already try it and it works. So as soon as my boss let me
shutdown database for about 2 hs, I'll do it.

Thank you all for your help (specially Peter and Helen)

Pablo

--- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, "peter_jacobi.rm"
<peter_jacobi@g...> wrote:

> The solution!
>
> You must go over a temporary CHARACTER SET OCTETS to
> let Firebird ignore the character set.
>
> For example in your table you add a third column:
> tmpFld VARCHAR(70) character set OCTETS
>
> Then you can first update
> set tmpFld=oldFld
>
> followed by
> set newFld=tmpFld
>
> Without the additional column, you can use
> set newFld = cast (oldFld as VARCHAR(70) character set OCTETS)
>
> Remember, that this will only help letting do
> Firebird something, whether this is the right thing
> depends on the nature of your input data.
>
> Regards,
> Peter Jacobi