ascii output problem

I have unit = v0(x) i am pulling this one byte out of eight

LCDOUT $FE,1,DEC UNIT," ", UNIT," ",BIN UNIT," ",HEX UNIT

here are four ways of showing the same var unit

dec unit shows 0 correct
unit shows || not correct
bin unit shows 0 correct
hex unit shows 0 correct

I try doing a if unit = 0 then somewhere but unit has the value of || and I can't use dec like unit = dec v0(x)

what am i doing and what do I need to do different?