This 9-bit RS485 LAN sounds like great fun!

I'm laying out a printed circuit board and since I needed a communications mux for FLASH support anyway, I threw in a '4052 and circuitry for four comm channels. It will support serial TTL for 8051 FLASH programming, RS232, IrDA, and RS485. I just won't populate all channels through production for the standard product line but we'll have it available for special contracts and convention shows.

I'd be interested in interfacing a laptop computer to the RS485 LAN. This would allow us, at trade shows or corporate presentations, to reconfigure any demo unit to operate as any one of our models. Later, we could use it to do multipoint airframe telemetry and save those customers a little trouble.

-Jay C. Box