How do you convert a HEX file to ASCII

Opening it in UltraEdit using the Hex viewer, it looks like this:

00000000h: 8C C5 97 2B 5C D6 00 00 00 00 93 98 30 00 30 00 ;
00000010h: F5 F2 F0 40 F9 F4 F0 F6 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 ;
00000020h: 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 ;
00000030h: 00 00 40 00 00 00 10 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 92 98 ;

I opened it in WordPad and it's a bunch of special characters (boxes, @, etc.)

Opening it in UltraEdit using the Hex viewer, it looks like this:

00000000h: 8C C5 97 2B 5C D6 00 00 00 00 93 98 30 00 30 00 ;
00000010h: F5 F2 F0 40 F9 F4 F0 F6 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 ;
00000020h: 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 ;
00000030h: 00 00 40 00 00 00 10 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 92 98 ;

I opened it in WordPad and it's a bunch of special characters (boxes, @, etc.)

That's a binary file, then.

UltraEdit is displaying it 16 bytes to a line, and showing the start address to the left of each line:

00000000h: 8C C5 97 2B 5C D6 00 00 00 00 93 98 30 00 30 00 ;
^^^^^^^^^  ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^
Address     |  |  |  +-- 4th byte - at Address +3
            |  |  +----- 3rd byte - at Address +2
            |  +-------- 2nd byte - at Address +1
            +----------- 1st byte - at Address
etc

Using the HEX viewer?

A hex viewer is what you use when you want to look at a binary file.

If the file is already in hexadecimal format, it is already - as Andy notes - in a form of ASCII.

I don't recognize the binary data, and it doesn't looks to make sense if treated as IEEE floating-point data either.

"I don't recognize the binary data..."

I don't expect you would: I don't think it has anythihg to do with embedded firmware - the OP says he's a "data analysis consultant"