It seems that you believe the only thing in the world for which serial ports are useful is communicating with other computers. Well, sir, I have news for you. There are other things for which one can use a serial input or output port. Remember what I said about a tape or disk drive? Have you ever tried to process a signal stream? Apparently not, or this bit of reality wouldn't have been lost on you.

As for the cellphone bit... Since you brought it up, why would anyone want to communicate with a cellphone using a PC? I'd just want it to work right, which it never will. Cellphones are only one of a million applications for microcontrollers. It's like the pimple on the elephant's *ss. Why even consider it? The devices used in cellphones aren't what most folks will ever see. Why even mention them? Do you want to fiddle with their innards? Tampering wth cellphones isn't nice, you know.

Telecom guys have nothing to sell except for bandwidth. You're suggesting that they're so dumb that they use a protocol that wastes two out of every ten bits it transmits just for start and stop bits? Not even they are that dumb.

RE