you ask, "What good does it do to have a fantastic piece of equipment if it can not communicate with what it is supposes to communicate with such as a PC?"

to which I reply, What good is a piece of async comm gear that can't do anything but communicate async?
Of course, but what do you have to select the crystal to match? I know of no (except for "dual interface, and that is not even "processing") case where the use of a UART crystal hinder "processing", but I know legio cases where a non-UART crystal hinder "communicating".

BTW, it's clearly not a typo ... the word you keep misspelling is "babbling," not "babbeling."
Thanks for the correction My second language (English) is, by no means, perfect.

If you use mode-0 with a somewhat faster than 12 MHz one-clocker, you can stuff your data into that T1 frame.
I doubt very much the "trunk administartor" would let me do that, for some reason, he insist that I use "storebought" interfaces (I would, were I him). Since all "storebought" interfaces, much to your chargrin, have decide to, gasp, adhere to an established standard, I have to use a UART crystal where I communicate with such.

anyhow, you refer occsionally to "what I do" a short list:
I receive 115k 485 from a PDA
I receive 9600/57600/115000/460000 RS232/RS422/RS485 from PCs
I communicate via RS485/RS232/J1708/IBIS/CAN with VLUs
I receive 115k 485 from a wireless modem with 811 processing
I receive J1708 status from automotive devices
I control automotive devices over J1708/IBIS
I receive data from PLCs, mostly RS485
I communicate with an XBOX etherenet I/F (in standard bauds)
I write to a VFD in standard bauds
I communicate serially standard UART with GPS units
I communicate serially standard UART with dead recogning units where the GPS can not get data

The above is my I/O (some always, some optional)- and the, in your opinion, stupid designers have decided to adhere to an established standard. The I/O is probably less than 5% of what I do but that decides my clock

For the remaining 95% I "live" with the clock I use and I know it just kills you that that may not be "convenient". From my viewpoint, it may cost me 0.01% more development time and cost me 0.1% efficiency, but HORRAY, my thing actually works as specified.

Erik