Helen, thx for your suggestions. Tried the following:

Created database with character set NONE. Created a table, with two
columns, one with character set NONE and one with character set
UNICODE_FSS.

On a new Delphi app, set Connection character set to UNICODE_FSS.
When inserting a new row using parameters, the unicode characters get
inserted correctly (tested this using the Unicode controls by Troy
Wilbrink). When using the inline "characterset-casting" method,
only ??? are retrieved from the unicode column.

I guess that I will create my database using the ISO8859_1 character
set, but on the IBO side, I will set the character set to
UNICODE_FSS. All inserts will have to be done via parameters. Seems
to work ok. Anyone has had a similiar experience with this?

Regards
Ray