Are you trying to convert a number in a character string to a float, or just a character to a float?

If it's just a character (as your question suggests), you can cast it as follows:

char MyChar = 'A';
float MyFloat = (float)MyChar;

printf("MyFloat = %.2f\n", MyFloat);

Which should give something like:

MyFloat = 65.00

Hope this helps,

- Nigel