Some random ideas...
I use DOS debug.com to view small text files, eg debug myfile.txt
D - dumps next page of memory
Q - quit
Was messing around trying to get SSIS to read £ signs properly
Ended up scripting as usual and found various text encodings. ASCII, UNC, etc
If you import System.IO and System.Text you can do
Dim objIn As StreamReader
Dim objOut As StreamWriter
objIn = New StreamReader(sIn, Encoding.ASCII)