I am having problems ready files that have been NFS mounted. Here is what i have:
Original files are on VMS server, need them on Linux server.
I have NFS mounted from VMS to Linux and can see the directory and files. When i try to read (vi) the files on the NFS mount the file is full of special charates ( R^@L~M, R^@^B~M, etc).
When i ftp the same files from the VMS server to the Linux server, the files come over as ascii text, as I need them. I know FTP has the ability to convert to ascii text if needed.
How do I manually convert these files so i do not have to use ftp? Any help would be grealty appreciated.

As you note, FTP is doing the conversion for you. There's a tool under VMS called 'convert' that can do this at the commandline, don't know if there's something similr for linux but it seems likely.