> > I don't see how you can resynchronize accurately without a mark
    > > condition lasting more than one CHARACTER time.  Otherwise, there's no
    > > way to distinguish the stop/start bit combination from any other two
    > > consecutive zero ("space") bits.
    >
    >   Ahhh!  You presume *immediate* correction.  I wasn't proposing
    > immediate resynchronisation.

    When you plug in a device, data may already be flowing quite easily,
    hence, with no mistakes on your part you are out of synch.

Interesting.  The implication is that you can cause faster (guaranteed)
resynchronization by having the transmitter periodically "pause" for at
least one character time...

Come to think of it, of you plug an ascii terminal into an existing
streaming data port, it seems to recover very quickly (much faster than I
would have expected.)  I guess you're 50% likely to have a bad stopbit,
which will always cause you to "advance" at least one bittime looking for
the next stop/start combination, so resynchronization shouldn't ever take
longer than 20 bytes or so (statistically speaking, assuming 10bits total
character size...)  I guess pausing isn't worthwhile!

BillW