Hello Dr. Dvorak,

I'm a rookie at this microcontroller programming stuff, but I am very interested
in finding the answers to your questions.  Since, I have to write the same
routines for the pic16c64.

I wonder what clock speed you are using for the chip.  This may have
an effect on the number of program steps that the chip must wait for the
next bit.  You could calculate this value and set a loop parameter, so
you could generalize the code for any speed.

Also if the chip is wasting time waiting to send the next bit, you could use
that time to check for an xon (h'11') or xoff (h'13') byte to see if you should
stop sending bits.

You probably already thought of this, and remember I'm a rookie.

Yours,

Derrick Early, the rookie user