Menno Wrote:
<that it is not necessarily the best solution for all applications one could think of.

I agree that RS-485 is not the final word on such communication. But the situatiuon described by the original poster (Ricardo) made me recommend RS-485. If you kindly take some time to go through the original post, here are some ponits.

1) Industrial use
2) 12 Stations communicating to singe PC port
3) 100 meter distance

May be I mis-interpreted the post, but if above points are valid, what else can you think of?