Reading Pascal DAT files in VB

Hi, i am currently working a VB project that uses data from an old and trusty Pascal program, which stores its data in DAT files. basically they're are flat files of user-defined records defined within the Pascal program.

I can see how the records are defined etc, but when the files are created in Pascal they are also compressed (in pascal) and are unreadable directly (notepad etc). Does anyone know of any dll files etc that allow you to read these flat record files like a normal text file, or anything at all that could help??? :confused:

The only thing i can do at the moment is make a stand-alone pascal program that exports the data into a readable format (i.e. CSV etc) but ideally it should be able to read it from the DAT files straight from the VB program.

Any help, good, bad, useless, comical or insulting would be much appreciated. :D

Thanks,

Darrel. :)