Originally Posted by Xerxes One could implement lots of serial interfaces with that Mesa card, 1 for each drive. Or just get enough RS-232 ports to rule them all. 
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These multi-port serial boards just are not cheap at all. USB or ethernet
can be implemented with 10Euro components and with 100 lines of C,
i know, i have done it many times. At the moment my AD-converter sensor
box for Nokia 770 uses Atmel AT91SAM7S USB and Uart emulation. Uart emulation
allows to use normal Uart api in user programs but is not limited by
any uart speed limits. I think that this Uart emulation is enough for
1Khw command channel but if someone likes to get 20Khz channel, then
isochronous mode is needed.
Some other places i have used some other microcontroller like MPC555
with ethernet chip. If i would do it again, i would use SAM7X chip.
Katti