righty, after a bit of investigation I found a solution.
I have take tom kytes code from here:
http://asktom.oracle.com/pls/ask/f?p...D:139812348065

and converted it to vb .net using the corelab Oracle driver. Probably
most people will want to change it to the oledb or oracle driver. I
have tried to keep it as true to the original as possible.

Code:

Imports CoreLab.Oracle
Public Class DBMSOutput
'
' our instance variables. It is always best to
' use callable or prepared statements and prepare (parse)
' them once per program execution, rather then one per
' execution in the program. The cost of reparsing is
' very high. Also -- make sure to use BIND VARIABLES!
'
' we use three statments in this class. One to enable
' dbms_output - equivalent to SET SERVEROUTPUT on in SQL*PLUS.
' another to disable it -- like SET SERVEROUTPUT OFF.
' the last is to "dump" or display the results from dbms_output
' using system.out
'
'
Private cmdEnable As OracleCommand
Private cmdDisable As OracleCommand
Private cmdShow As OracleCommand

'
' our constructor simply prepares the three
' statements we plan on executing.
'
' the statement we prepare for SHOW is a block of
' code to return a String of dbms_output output. Normally,
' you might bind to a PLSQL table type but the jdbc drivers
' don't support PLSQL table types -- hence we get the output
' and concatenate it into a string. We will retrieve at least
' one line of output -- so we may exceed your MAXBYTES parameter
' below. If you set MAXBYTES to 10 and the first line is 100
' bytes long, you will get the 100 bytes. MAXBYTES will stop us
' from getting yet another line but it will not chunk up a line.
'
'
Public Sub New(ByVal conn As OracleConnection)
cmdEnable = New OracleCommand("begin dbms_output.enable(:1);
end;", conn)
cmdEnable.Parameters.Add("1", OracleDbType.Number)

cmdDisable = New OracleCommand("begin dbms_output.disable;
end;", conn)

cmdShow = New OracleCommand("declare " & _
" l_line varchar2(255); " & _
" l_done number; " & _
" l_buffer long; " & _
"begin " & _
" loop " & _
" exit when length(l_buffer)+255 > :maxbytes OR l_done =
1; " & _
" dbms_output.get_line( l_line, l_done ); " & _
" l_buffer := l_buffer || l_line || chr(10); " & _
" end loop; " & _
" :done := l_done; " & _
" :buffer := l_buffer; " & _
"end;", conn)
cmdShow.Parameters.Add("maxbytes", OracleDbType.Integer).Value
= 32000
cmdShow.Parameters.Add("done", OracleDbType.Integer).Direction
= ParameterDirection.Output
cmdShow.Parameters.Add("buffer",
OracleDbType.VarChar).Direction = ParameterDirection.Output
End Sub

'
' enable simply sets your size and executes
' the dbms_output.enable call
'
'
Public Sub Enable(ByVal size As Integer)
cmdEnable.Parameters("1").Value = size
cmdEnable.ExecuteNonQuery()
End Sub


'
' disable only has to execute the dbms_output.disable call
'
Public Sub Disable()
cmdDisable.ExecuteNonQuery()
End Sub

'
' show does most of the work. It loops over
' all of the dbms_output data, fetching it in this
' case 32,000 bytes at a time (give or take 255 bytes).
' It will print this output on stdout by default (just
' reset what System.out is to change or redirect this
' output).
'
Public Sub Show()
Dim done As Integer = 0

While True
cmdShow.ExecuteNonQuery()
Console.WriteLine(cmdShow.Parameters("buffer").Val ue)
If cmdShow.Parameters("done").Value = 1 Then Exit While
End While

End Sub

End Class



it might be better to return the output as a string but I'm sure people
can modify it as required. For its usage, check out the tom kyte post.

ok, i found a mistake:
cmdShow.Parameters.Add("buffer", OracleDbType.VarChar).Direction =
ParameterDirection.Output

should become
cmdShow.Parameters.Add("buffer", OracleDbType.Long).Direction =
ParameterDirection.Output

I didnt realise the oracle data type of Long is a big string as opposed
to the vb net type wihich is a big integer, and I was getting overflows