VMS Help DEPOSIT, Qualifiers, /ASCII  *Conan The Librarian (sorry for the slow response - running on an old VAX)

    Indicates that the specified data is ASCII.

    Only one data item is allowed; all characters to the right
    of the equal sign (=)  are considered to be part of a single
    string. Unless they are enclosed within quotation marks (" "),
    characters are converted to uppercase and multiple spaces are
    compressed to a single space before the data is written in
    memory.

    The DEPOSIT command converts the data to its binary equivalent
    before placing it in virtual memory. When you specify /ASCII,
    or when ASCII mode is the default, the location you specify is
    assumed to be hexadecimal.