On Fri, 15 May 1998, Michael Hansson wrote:

> Hi Peter,
>
> > Why was RS232 choosen for this knowing that the image size on the screen
> > would necessarily distort the bit time and require a bit-bashing
> > controller to recover the data anyway ?
>
> I agree with you that a self-clocking scheme (as opposed to asynchronous NRZ)
> would seem to make more sense. I guess there were four reasons: 1) The poor
> 8-bit micro was hard up for cycles and already had a standard UART, 2) Time to
> market, 3) It worked fine on everything we tried it on and

> 4) Microsoft engineers wrote the drivers and knew how. But then again,
> it wasn't my decision. :-)

Ahh ! I think I know now who (and why) told you that 'full control of the
device driver was required' and that 'it would never work on a Mac' ;)

Peter