> The other issue is speed.  We did not terminate the pairs anywhere in the
> system (collective hiss from the crowd).  But at 300 BPS, the reflections
> died down long before the signal was needed in the UART.  At 4800 BPS,
> though, you are cooking along a bit faster (still nothing like 115K).  As
> such, you may have to terminate.  Pursue a straight bus topology, no
> branches.  Each reciever has a pair of resistors to pull the idle line to
a
> known state (one high and one low) so that whenever no transmitter was on
> (between every send) the noise on the line did not creep into the reciever
> and flood the UART.  These bias resistors are typical, though.  The
National
> (probably sold that to Fairchild too) driver and interface databook has
some
> awfully useful info on the subject.

My experience paralells yours. We had a lan running at 9600, and all I could
ever see that terminating it did, was reduce the S/N level. We had
reflections, but as you say, you'd need an awfully long cable before they'd
be significant at that speed.