Olin Lathrop wrote:
> You left out some important and obvious requirements, like speed, bus
> length, whether it will go outside the box or not, and the kind of external
> noise it must tolerate.  All in all, you need to go back and figure out your
> real spec.  You're not ready for answers to your spec yet since you don't
> have a spec.
>   
I *do* have a spec, but it is pretty open at this point.   I admit that 
I missed verbalizing a couple of key points - like distance and speed 
(and to answer you, I really only need a few hundred bps, and I need an 
end-to end bus length of a few feet, and although noise immunity is a 
concern, I don't think I'm all that worried over a few foot bus running 
at a few hundred bps.).

But, did you ever think I was perhaps *deliberately* vague about some 
points so that I wouldn't put preconcieved notions in people's head?   I 
was hoping for a wide variety of answers which would point me in some 
directions I hadn't thought about - and the more detailed you write the 
"spec" the fewer answers you get - which is exactly what I was trying to 
avoid.

I really appreciate everyone that took the time to *think* about this 
for at least a few seconds and respond, instead of just assuming that 
the person asking the question was a clueless dolt and responding .   In 
fact, almost every response other than Olin's was useful and helpful.   
I especially appreciate Harold's response, as I was kinda heading in 
that direction already and his experience in doing so proved to validate 
what I was thinking.   I'm also going to dig a bit more on a couple of 
the other ideas as well (such as dig more into CAN and Manchester coding).

-forrest
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