encoding problems with pymssql / win

[morris carre]

I have a strange problem : some code that fetches queries from an mssql 
database works fine under Idle but the very same code run from a shell 
window obtains its strings garbled as if the encoding codepage was 
modified. This occurs only when using pymssql to connect; if I connect 
through odbc (using the odbc module included in pywin) this problem 
vanishes.

I briefly thought sys.getdefaultencoding() would pin it down but the 
value is "ascii" in all cases.

If anyone has a lead as to what may be happening here or how to solve it 
(apart from using odbc, that is), advice is welcome.

I am using python 2.4.2 and pymssql 0.7.3 under win2k sp4 on the client 
machine, while the server machine has windows server 2003 + sqlserver2k, 
locale is fr_CH. For an example of garbling, I get '\x8a' where I should 
get '\xe8'

TIA, mc
--
(to email use "boris at batiment71 dot ch")