At 03:29  07/01/96 -0500, John Payson wrote:
Note that for the packet sizes you're using, there really isn't
>any practical way to use an error-correcting code; most bit errors will
>likely cause framing errors, and ECC's are likely to botch on those.

John, you sure got that right.

In disk controllers, which tend to use fairly humongous ECCs, sector data
can always be located in time relation to a sync pulse which is generated by
hardware, at, say, zero degrees of rotation (e.g. floppy disks have little
holes at sector 0). Therefore, even if you read incorrect data, at least you
WILL be reading data. So ECCs make great sense and work just fine - when's
the last time you actually had data corrupted on your hard disk? DBLSPACE
users need not reply.

UART serial? Not a chance. Data looks just like framing except for context.
Lose the context, and you'll lose the data, and all the ECCs in the world
won't help. But now you can do something disk controllers can't possibly do:
NAK and repeat...