On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 2:11 PM, Olin Lathrop w= rote: > Then you haven't given it much thought. =A0Both ethernet and CAN do the > collision detection in hardware. =A0That's rather different than doing it > youself with RS-485, especially since some quick timing is needed. That's the key there. I don't want to burden the CPU with too much of the protocol details. That's why I need the simplest type of protocol. Token bus is awesome because it guarantees that there will never be a collision. Also, the master polling system that you have mentioned before is also awesome. If this doesn't work out, I'm going to do it that way. The time slot system is also cool but I need a way to get the time slot mechanism working and I have no idea how to do that. CSMA/CD is cool too, but now we have to detect collisions. I think that's too complicated for me. -- = http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist